Eileen Gray and the House E1027

Detail from the speaker’s 1:10 model

A talk to Docomomo UK by Philip Boyle

28th January 2024, at the ABA Gallery

19:00-20:30

Tickets in advance: Docomomo UK non-members: £13.70 incl fees

Tickets on the door: Docomomo UK non-members: £15

Tickets for Docomomo UK members: free

“DEFENSE DE RIRE”. (“Do not laugh”)

This is a small text written in stencil to be read on the entrance screen wall by guests upon arrival in the house E1027, the holiday home for a Parisian couple in the south of France.

There are a series of stencilled labels throughout the house to help guests settle in and to avoid time-wasting questions from the guests to the hosts.

“DEFENSE DE RIRE”. (“Do not laugh”)

However, this is not so much a label as it is an appeal to sensibility.

The importance of this small holiday home is in the extraordinary quality and sensitivity it achieved and brought to Modern Movement architecture.

Combined with extended periods of substantial neglect and damage this small holiday home has been the subject of much speculation over many decades. It has eventually been reconstructed very close to its original state. This has been possible due to the exceptional quality of subsequent detailed research over decades by many interested parties, and by the initial set of Texts, Drawings and Photographs made for publication by Badovici and Gray in L’Architecture Vivante in 1929.

In this talk, Philip Boyle, who has made a model of the house at 1: 10 scale, will use photographs of this model, ‘deconstructed’ to help study and examine the extent of sensitivity that Eileen Gray as ‘architect “client”’ and Jean Badovici as ‘architect “client”’ achieved in the design and construction of this small house.