Outer living

While the warm weather has vanished for the Pure Contemporary staff up here in Western NY, those of you closer to the equator are still feeling the burn -- and in need of some mod outdoor furnishings.

These will definitely be on my wish list come early Spring -- and should be on your property ASAP!

Check out Pampaexport's full line.

--allie

Tags: modern outdoor furniture, contemporary furniture, modern dining table, modern outdoor seating

A Nip and a Tuck to a whole new set!

Tuesdays just got better... Nip/Tuck is back -- and more modern than ever!

I don't know what I liked more -- the blue sofas in the reception area at the new Rodeo Drive office of McNamara/Troy, or the black kitchen table in Christian's new LA pad.

With the boys soaking in the L.A. sun we're sure our readers will be clamoring to know who designed what -- and where they can buy it! Send us your inquiries and we'll do our best to get the inside dish from Ellen Brill, the set designer behind this provocative program.

Modern Concrete Fireplaces

Solus makes modern, minimalist, warm looking fireplace surrounds and tiles. It's rare to find such smooth finishes and deep, even colors in the company's medium of choice. concrete, but Solus achieves it in a  variety of styles. Check the website for images of its 10 cast surrounds, and 4 tile shapes, which can be used on floors, walls, or of course, fireplaces. Don't see the concrete style of your dreams? Contact them. Solus can customize to meet your needs, everything's handcrafted anyway.

Get Wired

Bertoia would be proud. Decades after he perfected the art of wired furniture, the modernist craze is still unraveling, and we can't get enough of it. To wit, the DWR issue of Platner's wire collection...

Arik Levy's wire tables for Zanotta...

And this exhibit of wire furniture sculptures by Forrest Myers at Friedman Benda in New York City...

The exhibit open November 8.

Eileen Gray, 1st Lady of Modernism

Here at PC, we often comment on the plight of female architects. They so rarely attain the household name status of their male counterparts. Is it because women just aren't as good at that sort of thing?  We don't think so. After all, theirs is the creative sex.

But living in the shadows of male architects is nothing new, as the story of one our favorite creators, Eileen Gray, illustrates. Her greatest masterpiece is not the adjustable table, or even the Bibendum chair, but a house on the sea.  She alone scouted for and found the perfect plot of land. And she alone created the furniture that would fit into each space she conceived of. Her mistake? She bought the land in the name of her then lover, Jean Badovici.

A struggling architect, Badovici was to be the recipient of a very expensive gift from the independently wealthy Gray. She built her dream home for him, implementing only a few of his ideas into her design. But, following his death, and the bizarre influence of Le Corbusier, Gray's home was remembered as having been designed by Badovici. Only in the late 1980s did public consciousness in France begin to realize that the now crowded, crumbling seaside home was the creation of one of modernism's greatest contributers - and that wasn't Badovici.

An engaging and beautifully written account of Gray's life and of her experiences with her home, named E1027, follows. Take the time to check it out, and discover more about a progressive female architect now remembered more for her furniture than for her true masterpiece, a home.

The Guardian (London)

THE HOUSE THAT EILEEN BUILT: She was, for a brief moment in

the 20s, in the vanguard of architectural modernism, feted for the 'little

refuge' she built on France's southernmost tip. So why is Eileen Gray's

contribution overlooked?

BY: Frances Stonor Saunders

July 21, 2001

    Just beneath the railway line at Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, on the easterly end

of the Cote d'Azur, there runs a narrow pathway. Here, in summer, the heat

punches you with the smell of dog faeces dropped by the ridiculous breeds in

which wealthy populations tend to indulge. At one end of the path, there is a

telephone box, its cables conspicuously severed. Two large galvanised lids sit

across a sewage outlet, and empty beer bottles and constellations of cigarette

stubs suggest that this isolated ribbon of concrete offers an alternative

nightlife to the casinos and restaurants of nearby Menton. A hundred feet below,

but only intermittently visible through tangled overgrowth and chicken-wire

fencing, the Mediterranean dashes against the honeycombed limestone rocks.

Above, the Metrazur train, which runs the 150 miles between Ventimiglia and

Marseilles, hugs the steep Provencal hills in its slow, littoral trundle. Only

from the train would you glimpse the house that sits between the pathway and the

sea.

    Seventy-six years ago, Eileen Gray, an Anglo-Irish woman who dressed in

superbly tailored trouser suits and a floppy bow-tie, parked her car next to the

little station and walked down on to this path. A few minutes later, she turned

off it and clambered down over crumbling stone walls, through the scattered

Levant pines and bushes of wild rosemary and euphorbia, before coming upon a

small terrace in the rocks. Gazing out across the Mediterranean, to the west,

she saw the massive rock of Monte Carlo and part of the harbour peeping out from

behind it. South and east, there was nothing but sea. For weeks, Gray had been

scouring the coast for a suitable plot on which to build a house. Now, suddenly,

she knew that this was the place.

    Gray was then 47 and an accomplished designer. But her experience as an

architect consisted of little more than a few small models in wood. Three years

from this moment - years measured out in wheelbarrows and loneliness and an

unshakeable sense of purpose - her quixotic venture would be completed: a

"maison en bord de mer" that, for a brief period until the senators of the

movement overwrote her contribution, placed her in the forefront of

architectural modernism. This was Gray's "Invitation au voyage", the words taken

from Baudelaire's prose poem of the same title and stencilled on a wall of the

house: "It is there we must go to breathe, to dream, and to prolong the hours in

an infinity of sensations."

    Gray was born in 1878 at Brownswood House in County Wexford. Her mother,

Eveleen, who was descended from the 15th-century peer Lord Gray, had run off to

Italy, when she was 21, with James Maclaren Smith, a handsome painter 10 years

her senior. They married in 1863, producing five children, of whom the last was

Eileen. Her childhood was conventionally happy but, from an early age, she

developed a sense of being unloved. Early photographs show her beautiful, feline

features locked in a distant, wistful gaze, her lips turned down, even when

smiling. She was extremely frightened as a child. Sometimes she would get up

from her bed and steal down the dark corridor, quietly put two chairs in front

of her mother's door and there fall asleep until the servants found her at dawn.

Even in old age, she wrote: "I have instinctive fears, fears of ghosts, of

people. I have tried in vain to conquer (them)."

    If Gray was a frightened child, she was also physically courageous. She once

dragged an invalid chair up a hill and raced down at breakneck speed. Later, she

became one of the first women to fly in an aeroplane. She also loved cars and

even investigated, at the age of 80, buying a Vespa. Although she inherited from

her mother a sense of decorum, of rectitude even, from her artist father, who

lived mostly in Switzerland and Italy, she acquired a burning need for

independence - a need she was rarely to compromise in her long life.

    As Gray entered womanhood, she began to strain at the expectations of her

class and upbringing (she disdained her title, "The Honourable", deeming it

suitable only for operettas). Life had been spent between Brownswood and the

family house in Kensington, her education imparted by a series of governesses.

There had been a few short trips abroad to visit her father, or to board at a

private school for a term. In 1900, the Boer war claimed her brother's life and

natural causes her father's. Perhaps to distract her from grief, her mother took

her to Paris to see the Exposition Universale. Its most celebrated pavilion was

the Palace of Electricity, whose facade opened in a fan illuminated by 5,700

electric light-bulbs. It was this Gray fell in love with, the modernity of

Paris, in contrast to the gloom of fog-filled London. She resolved to return.

    Two years later, having attended, patchily, the Slade School of Fine Art,

Gray settled in Paris with friends Kathleen Bruce (later Lady Scott, wife of

Robert Scott, the explorer) and Jessie Gavin. "Les trois jolies anglaises", as

they became known, enrolled at the Ecole Colarossi, an art school popular with

foreign students, but soon changed to the more lively Academie Julian.

    Recalling Gray years later, Bruce wrote of her as "fair, with wide-set, pale

blue eyes, tall and of grand proportion, well-born and quaintly and beautifully

dressed . . . the most romantic figure I had ever seen". Gavin evidently felt

the same way, and by the end of 1902 their friendship had developed into an

affair. Gavin had taken to wearing corduroys and a Norfolk jacket, and

occasionally a wig and false moustache, telling Gray, "We'll . . . play chess in

a cafe. I can take you to places where you can't go without a man."

    Gray, at this time, was still wearing her thick auburn hair in the Edwardian

style. Later, she had it cut into a bob and shed her corseted dresses for

couture suits. She was always impeccably, discreetly elegant and shunned the

more aggressive look of that clique of lesbians - Gertrude Stein, Alice B

Toklas, Natalie Clifford Barney - with whom she was acquainted.

    Gray had affairs with men as well as women, but never spoke of her

sexuality, perhaps in deference to her mother, who hoped that she would marry

and marry well (she did neither). But what characterised all her relationships,

sexual or otherwise, was her intolerance of the intrusion into her interior

life, whose secrets she stubbornly defended. She was, said American journalist

and photographer Therese Bonney, "unassuming, unexplosive, entirely consecrated

".

    In 1905, Gray returned to London to be with her mother, who was unwell. One

day, walking down Dean Street, she stumbled upon a lacquer repair shop and

enquired if she could work there for a while. She spent most of the following

months in the shop, watching and sometimes helping to rub down the many coats

used to decorate screens and furniture. The next year, she returned to Paris

armed with materials and the names of people who worked in the field. Soon, she

met Seizo Sugawara, a penniless Japanese student in his 20s who had come to

Paris to restore the lacquer pieces Japan had sent to the Exposition Universale.

Gray asked him to teach her. Eventually, she mastered the medium to a perfection

that assures her a place in history as one of the great lacquer artists.

    Lacquer is an austere, obdurate material that can't be rushed. Sensuous and

ascetic in equal measure, it suited Gray's temperament well. For weeks, months

on end, she hardly left her workplace, her hands and arms developing the lacquer

disease, a rash that is hard to heal. Mostly, she worked on wood (she was, one

admirer said, an "alchimiste du bois"), and in time she achieved screens,

tables, chairs and beds of great subtlety and richness. By 1912, she was

producing pieces to commission for some of Paris's richest clients.

    The dominant style in Paris in these years was art nouveau, and Gray's

lacquer work has often been placed in its context of decadence (she would later

refer to the work as "the sins of my past"). Yet her pieces were not so much a

product of this style as an argument with it, a challenge to what she called

"those ghastly drapes and curves of Tiffany and art nouveau".

    Form, as many artists were now discovering, can be a prison. Suddenly, a

series of break-outs was made: Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907),

Brancusi's The Kiss (1907), Duchamp's Nude Descending A Staircase (1912), Peter

Behrens' AEG factory in Berlin, the Ballets Russes, Stravinsky's Firebird

(1910), Marinetti's Futurist Manifesto (1909). These works were not simply

matters of private belief, but strategic incursions into the public

consciousness, making "modernism" a recognisable state of mind. And Gray, in her

desire to "simplify the figurative with almost geometrical designs", was very

much a part of it.

    Then there was war, the Great War, which Henri Gaudier-Brzeska called "the

great remedy" and Ezra Pound the "cleansing" that would purge the capitalist

world of all ills. The Futurists glorified it as "the world's only hygiene" and

set off on their bicycles to join it. Most didn't come back. At the end of it,

Gray, who had served as an ambulance driver before returning to England (she

took with her Sugawara and as much lacquer material as she could squeeze into

her car), came back to a Paris where the myth of the future had gone into shock.

She resumed her lacquer work and was now called to exhibit it at the great

salons. Newspapers began to write of her exquisite pieces, but she cared little

for such recognition and began to feel uncomfortable with the class-bound

opulence of her work. The question now was how to rebuild society after the

devastation of war. How could art, design and, in particular, architecture

ameliorate social crisis?

    In L'Esprit Nouveau, Le Corbusier promised a new age animated by technology,

mass production and geometric order. After the blood and mess of war, he was

going to build a clean, white world for everyone. So where did Japanese resin

fit in? For Corbusier, nowhere. "European lacquer, smart opium, reimported to

the Far East, return freight," he wrote in June, 1924.

    Gray had met Corbusier. She was introduced to him through Jean Badovici, a

penniless young Romanian architect who shared a garret with the Greek journalist

Christian Zervos. In 1923, they published the first issue of L'Architecture

Vivante, which soon became the most distinguished magazine of its kind. Badovici

saw in Gray a woman of both great artistic talent and independent wealth, who

might be able to help him put his creative ideas into practice. She, in turn,

was much taken by his enthusiasm and by his insistence that she should build,

should stop frittering away her time and "make a door that will last".

    As Gray climbed back up to the footpath at Roquebrune that day in 1925, she

knew for certain that she was going to build. She immediately called Badovici in

Paris. He came down, loved the place, and Gray bought it in his name. They were,

by this time, lovers. She returned to Paris and began to make architectural

plans. Over the next months, she travelled down to Roquebrune several times,

before finally presenting Badovici with a model for his "little refuge". At his

suggestion, she re-drew the plan to include pilotis, concrete columns that would

elevate the main living space. By early 1926, she was ready to start.

    Taking a little flat in Roquebrune, Gray hired a mason and two assistants.

For the next three years, she remained on or near the site, following her design

exactly, "determined not to make any compromises". She saw hardly anyone for

months on end, except for the locals who wandered down to see what this "mad

Englishwoman" was doing. The work was hard: all the material had to be brought

to the site by wheelbarrow. There was no one to talk to and she took most of her

meals alone. At the end of each day, she was lonely and tired, her only reward a

swim in the crystal clear sea.

    Occasionally, Badovici came down to give advice. It was always clear that

the "maison en bord de mer" was to be his: the land had been purchased in his

name, and the structure and furnishings, all designed by Gray, were consciously

developed in response to his personal needs. Gray named the house E.1027. "E"

for "Eileen", 10 for the letter "J", 2 for "B" and 7 for "G" - "Eileen Jean

Badovici Gray". Fittingly, for someone so private, in the very act of announcing

their collaboration, she managed to conceal it in code.

    T he site Gray had chosen was difficult terrain, but she had decided to let

the house embrace the natural contours of the land. It consisted of a large

living room, extended by a terrace, and two main bedrooms. A spiral staircase

linked the two floors (and extended to the flat roof, Badovici's idea) and the

lower floor was divided between a guest bedroom and two tiny cells for a maid

and children (not having any, Gray worked on the principle that the best

children were those who were not seen). Gray had spent months studying the light

and wind direction to make best use of natural elements, and the distinction

between outside and inside was deliberately dissipated.

    Everything recalled the architecture of boats. "Entering a house is like . .

. the sensation of pleasure when one arrives with a boat in a harbour, the

feeling of being enclosed but free to circulate," Gray said. Taut sailcloth

membranes on the terrace's metal railings offered protection from the sun and

her "Transat" deckchairs (in reference to the ocean-liner company

Transatlantique) suggested a cruise; inside, wall-mounted headboards for the

beds included compartments for cushions, books, a hot-water bottle, while

supporting lights, clocks and extending table-tops, as in a cabin. There were

also hidden areas for storage - or secrets. If a house is a metaphor for a life,

then these layers of interiors within interiors spoke of Gray's habit of stowing

away her most precious possession, her inner life. There was wit, too:

life-preservers hung from the balcony deck, too far from the water to be of any

use. But seen from the sea, they added to the impression of the house as a ship

that had glided through the rocky incline until it had come to anchor, a stanza

in the odyssey of modernism.

    In many aspects, this was a manifesto house formu lated on the basis of

Corbusier's famous "Five Points of the New Architecture", which stipulated a

house that "stands on pilotis", where "the roof is reached via a staircase",

"open-plan living is achieved by the mixture of free-standing and fixed walls",

"the windows are oriented horizontally" and "the south window creates an open

facade". It was also influenced by Corbusier's interest in creating the "maison

minimum", a small, prototype house that could be adapted and multiplied to help

ease the housing shortage resulting from the war. Gray's use of prefabricated

elements shows an engagement with these ideas, but if she was influenced by

Corbusier's teachings, she was not wholly acquiescent. Deviating from his famous

dictum, she wrote: "A house is not a machine to live in. It is the shell of man,

his extension, his release, his spiritual emanation. (It is) a living organism

in which each of the inhabitants could . . . find total independence and an

atmosphere of solitude and concentration."

    The house was read first through its relationship with the body. Gray strove

to heighten bodily awareness, providing a profusion of glinting materials in the

bathroom - tiled walls, folding mirrors, porcelain sinks - whose cool surfaces

provided a respite from the relentless Mediterranean sun. Such material

palpability invoked a sense of the erotic, the sensual. "The poverty of modern

architecture stems from the atrophy of sensuality," Gray said. "Everything is

dominated by reason in order to create amazement without proper research." (In

some vital aspects, she fell short of her own standard of "research". The

kitchen, for instance, was sadly neglected, probably because its inadequacies

didn't affect her. She couldn't boil an egg and always had a maid to deal with

domestic duties.)

    There was a further ironic commentary on the contemporary obsession with

machine imagery. Gray used Corbusian stencils to caption the house for the

uninitiated: in the entrance, "Defense de rire" and "Entrez lentement"; next to

the mirrors in the guest room, "Madame petite et coquette" and "Monsieur qui

aime se regarder la nuque". The house, Gray said, must "be useful for comfort

and for aiding in joie de vivre". Such playfulness was seen in Gray's Bibendum

chair, modelled on the Michelin tyre man, and in the swivelling arm of a bedside

table. At a time when modernism's dominant tone was one of muscular religiosity,

Gray was puncturing its inflated seriousness.

    She went further. When, that year, Badovici devoted a special issue of L

'Architecture Vivante to the house, he quoted Gray attacking architects who

confused "simplicity" with "simplification" and mistook "formulas" for life

itself. "The world is full of living allusions, living symmetries, hard to find,

but real . . . Their wish for rigid precision has made them neglect the beauty

of all these forms: disks, cylinders, wavy and zigzag lines, ellipsoidal lines,

which are like straight lines in motion. Avant-garde architecture has no soul."

    Gray had given her soul to this house. And, for a while, she was to enjoy

her achievement. She spent several summers here, sometimes with Badovici,

sometimes alone. In 1937, Corbusier visited for the first time. That summer, he

came often for tea with his wife, as did Fernand Leger. There was much

conversation, practical jokes and laughter. But Gray's relationship with

Badovici was becoming strained. He was 14 years her junior, drank heavily and

was a great womaniser. She talked later of his "lies and silliness". So she did

what she always did. She moved on. "One must never look for happiness," she once

mused. "It passes you on your way, but always in the opposite direction.

Sometimes I recognised it."

    Later that summer, Corbusier wrote: "I am so happy to tell you how much

those few days spent in your house have made me appreciate the rare spirit which

dictates all the organisation inside and outside. A rare spirit which has given

the modern furniture and installations such a dignified, charming, and witty

shape." Gray was enormously proud of this: Corbusier was acknowledging that it

was the house she had built.

    But in 1938, the situation turned: Corbusier again visited the house, but

this time he stripped naked and started painting her blank walls with murals. He

did not seek Gray's permission and it was an act she deeply resented. He covered

her clear and consciously low-key house with overtly sexual, garish paintings

(eight altogether) in what she called "an act of vandalism".

    Gray continued to see Badovici, with whom she remained on good terms, but

she wouldn't visit him at E.1027, preferring to meet for a quiet lunch nearby.

She had already built a new house for herself in the village of Castellar and

was to be seen speeding around the Provencal roads in a little MG, usually

accompanied by her maid. She did little or no lacquer work now, preferring to

work on new architectural designs (she was to realise only one more project in

her lifetime) and on designing furniture.

    Then war. Again. As a resident alien, Gray was forbidden to live near the

sea, so she moved inland to Lourmarin, a little town in the Vaucluse region.

Here she drew and made sculptures, using odd bits and pieces, and scribbled

notes on architecture in a little brown book. In 1944, her house at Castellar

was ransacked and a flat she had rented before the war in St-Tropez was blown

apart by German shelling. She lost most of her furniture and designs - decades

of work destroyed. E.1027, meanwhile, had been occupied by Italian, then German

soldiers, who used one of Corbusier's murals for target practice.

    After the German retreat, Gray returned to Paris, but her love of the South

of France was undiminished. In 1953, she started converting an old cabanon near

St-Tropez. She was now 75, but as determined as she had been when she built

E.1027. She camped out in the half-finished house for weeks on end, sleeping on

a camp bed with the rain falling through the roof. By the time it was finished,

she was 80 and Badovici was dead. Gray arranged his funeral. She had been a

catalyst for his architectural ambitions, advising him on elevations for his

sole independent project, a house he designed in the late 30s on Paris's Right

Bank. Yet when the Union des Artistes Moderne arranged a memorial exhibition in

his honour at the first Triennale of Contemporary French Art in Paris, Gray's

offer to assist was rejected and E.1027 attributed to "Jean Badovici with the

collaboration of Eileen Gray for the furniture".

    Corbusier, who knew this was a misattribution, did nothing to correct the

error. Indeed, determined to preserve the house and his frescoes, he actively

promoted the impression that Badovici was its creator. In 1950, he had acquired

a small plot of land next to E.1027, on which he built La Baraque, a tiny wooden

shack. Then, shortly before Badovici's death, he had erected a "hostel" on the

land directly overlooking the villa. Elevated on pilotis, this intrusive,

two-storey building not only destroyed the visual isolation of E.1027, but also

operated, together with his cabanon, to situate Gray's masterpiece within a

Corbusian frame.

    For four years after Badovici's death, E.1027 languished. As it had been

registered in his name, his sister was now the legal heir, but she was stuck in

Romania and prohibited from owning property abroad. In 1960, Corbusier

successfully solicited a buyer, a wealthy Swiss widow called Marie-Louise

Schelbert. Telephoning her in Zurich, he told her to "bring all the money you

can get hold of, and a hat!" She went to Roquebrune and found the house in a

miserable state, but decided to buy it anyway. The house was auctioned at Menton

in June 1960 and the contract of sale signed between Schelbert and a

"representative" for Badovici's sister (he was, in fact, acting for the Romanian

government, which pocketed the proceeds). Gray tried to retrieve some furniture

but was, she later said, "prevented". She could never again be persuaded to

visit her "maison en bord de mer".

    E.1027 was now saved. Schelbert made several alterations, but was on the

whole a decent custodian of Gray's house, even if she had never heard of her.

Corbusier, by now recognised as the architectural titan of his age, was often

there, spending the summer in his shack while members of his burgeoning

architectural practice stayed in the "hostel" behind the villa. On August 27,

1965, he walked down the steps that had been rudely carved out of the rocks

below the house, and lowered himself into the water. Since the death of his wife

Yvonne two years earlier, he had been drinking heavily and had gained weight. He

swam for a while, then staggered out of the water, his face riven with pain. And

there he died, of a massive heart attack. Shortly after, the little footpath was

designated "Promenade Le Corbusier". And thus he still looms as a presence,

looking down, literally, on Gray's work.

    Sometime in 1980, in the middle of the night, a man parked a lorry next to

Roquebrune station and made his way down the footpath to the house. Opening the

door with a key, he proceeded to remove most of Gray's furniture to the lorry,

before driving to Zurich. His name was Heinz Peter Kagi and he was Schelbert's

physician. Three days later, she was found dead in her apartment. Kagi produced

documents to show that he had purchased the house from Schelbert in 1974, but

her children, suspicious that he might have had a hand in her death, pursued

legal means to block the change of ownership. Their lawsuit was unsuccessful and

Kagi moved into the house, selling off the remaining furniture at auctions

handled by Sotheby's in Monaco. When the Centre Georges Pompidou arranged

separately to buy some of the furniture, it was with the understanding that Kagi

would use the proceeds to restore the villa, but he made no effort to do so.

    Under Kagi's ownership, E.1027 deteriorated rapidly. Rumours spread that the

villa was now a kind of orgy den, with Kagi picking up local boys and offering

them drugs and booze. On August 22, 1996, an argument broke out and Kagi was

stabbed with a long knife and left bleeding to death on the floor of the living

room. His assailants were two vagrants he had taken into the house in exchange

for work on the garden. They had demanded money for their labours but he'd

refused to pay, so they took his life. After stealing his car and passport, they

made for the Swiss border, where they were arrested and charged with his murder,

for which they received life sentences.

    After Kagi's death, the villa was squatted and vandalised. Surprisingly,

Corbusier's frescoes survived. In any case, this mutilation finally prompted

official efforts to save the villa, which was reclassified a full "monument

historique" in November 1998 (in 1975 it had been included on France's

supplementary inventory of historic monuments). Ironically, the murals were its

best-preserved aspect; without them, the house would undoubtedly have been left

to rot.

    The job of securing the villa for posterity has fallen to Renaud Barres, an

architect in his mid-30s who admires Gray and reveres Corbusier. As a child, he

spent summers with his father in Corbusier's "hostel". Now, as official guardian

of the site, he enjoys the right to stay in Corbusier's cabanon, used by the

architect from 1954 until his death. This stark wooden shack is highly ascetic,

with none of the sensuality of Gray's building. It, too, has a mural, whose most

prominent feature is an erect penis Barres calls "the big dick".

    Barres has a vision for E.1027. It will be restored (though there doesn't

seem to be any money) and preserved, together with Corbusier's buildings, as a

study centre for architects, with public access offered for a limited period

each year. When pushed for details of funding and schedules, Barres is vague. In

June 1999, Norman Foster and Partners submitted preliminary plans for the

construction of a villa on St Jean-Cap-Ferrat. Noting that the region hosts some

of the world's finest examples of domestic modernist architecture, the proposal

specifically refers to E.1027 as "associating modernism with the traditions of

the Mediterranean". On seeing the plans, Barres at once wrote to Foster, seeking

his support in saving the villa. He has not yet had a reply. It seems that

architects, as much as the corrosive winds that whip up from the sea, have been

unkind to the dreams of Gray.

    As I tour her house with Barres, I have the strong sensation of visiting a

shipwreck. Here, beached on the shores of conservation and heritage bureaucracy,

the bitter infighting of executors and lawyers, lies the skeletal frame of a

once noble vessel. The concrete is crumbling, exposing long sections of iron

support rods. The stairway leading to the raised deck is leaning perilously to

one side. All but a few windows are smashed, the rude crisscross of masking tape

and plastic sheeting flapping in the breeze. Stripped of its fixtures and

fittings, the villa's walls cast the shadow of the past and no longer the light

of the future. Like all shipwrecks, the ghosts of the past linger. Ghosts that

would have frightened Gray.

    She died in Paris, after a fall, on the morning of Sunday, October 31, 1976.

She was 98. French radio announced her death that evening. She was buried the

following week at the Pere Lachaise cemetery, in a simple grave numbered 17616.

"There is a path which leads upward and there is a path which leads downward.

Both are one and the same," she once said. A suitable epitaph

BOOK NOTE:

    Eileen Gray, by Caroline Constant, is published by Phaidon, priced pounds

39.95. Peter Adam's biography, Eileen Gray: Architect/Designer, is published by

Thames & Hudson, priced pounds 16.95. To order a copy of either book, with free

first-class p&p, call 0870 066 7979.

Surfs Up for Modern Kids

Toilet training and teeth brushing just got a whole lot cooler. This bamboo step stool makes reaching the sink or the toilet much easier for little ones, and it's sturdy enough for an adult to stand on too. With a surfboard shape that makes this a handy seat as well, this little stool is a stylish, modern and functional addition to any aspiring surfer's decor. $99 through ModernTots.

The World’s Most Expensive Green Mega-Mansion

Just got this press release in. What do you guys think? Can giant really be green? Seems that all the energy expended and products used (think of their manufacturing and shipping impacts) could be better used to build several smaller efficient homes. I'm thinking this kind of defeats the purpose. But this is America, after all, and we're going to have people who want McMansions even after NYC is underwater. So if it has to be giant, at least it's more green than the monstrosities that have come before... 

We have to give the developer kudos for stewardship, just maybe not of the environmental sort: he does use profits from his previous succsses to build homes for people in the poorest countries. I also have to give him points for wearing vests and sticking with his Winger-style hair decades after anyone besides Dog the Bounty Hunter thinks it looks good.  (Check the link to the YouTube for evidence)

MANALAPAN, Fla. -- Is it possible to build a green mega mansion? Is that an oxymoron, or worse yet, unethical? 

One man is risking a fortune to prove it can be done.

Legendary real estate "artist" Frank McKinney is creating the world's largest and most expensive certified green mansion ever built. What is even more amazing is that McKinney is doing so on speculation (without a buyer in mind), in Palm Beach County, Florida. The price tag? $29 million.

The entire process is being filmed by the well-known production company, RIVR Media, for a yet unsold docu-series currently titled "The Green Giant." The trailor for “The Green Giant” is viewable now on YouTube.

McKinney is an American original; a real estate "artist", 2-time international best-selling author and visionary who sees opportunities and creates real estate markets where none existed before. At age 18, with $50 in his pocket and without the benefit of higher education, McKinney left his native Indiana for Florida in search of his "highest calling."

For the full story on Frank McKinney and updates on the $29 million green mega-mansion, aptly named "Acqua Liana", visit FrankMcKinney.com.

Green features of “Acqua Liana:”

§ enough solar panels to cover a regulation-size basketball court and could generate enough energy for two average-size homes;

§         a water system that collects enough “gray” runoff water to fill the average swimming pool every 14 days;

§         enough reclaimed wood to save 7.5 acres of Brazilian rain forest;

§         renewable woods that regenerate every three years vs. every 50 years for other hardwoods;

§ pools, reflecting ponds, water gardens, misters, etc., to drop the site temperature 3 - 5 degrees over neighboring properties;

§         recycling 340,000 pounds of debris during construction;

§         air-conditioning and air purification systems four times better than an operating room in the Mayo Clinic.

Orange is in

According to all the fashion mags, orange is in for fall! And while my fair locks, pale complexion and rosy cheeks wouldn't take well to tangerine, my home sure will!

Check out the Ray Designer Dining Table, starting at $2802 from Spacify.

--allie

Tags: modern dining table, contemporary furniture, Spacify, orange table

Modern Lounge - Grasshopper Chair!

An opportunity so fabulous I just had to stop everything I was doing and post this immediately has presented itself. Now this isn't for everbody, but the serious collector of modern who has deep resources should take note...
In honor of Fabricius & Kastholm's 40th anniversary, the Grasshopper chair is now available from SUITE New York in white leather in a Limited Edition of 40.

The Danish design duo's most famous chair, the Grasshopper has been featured in top international design magazines, including PC. Isn't nice just to know that such beauty exists?

Get High

Attention buyers, designers, students and press: Register Now!

High Point Market 2008 is set for April 7-13. Check out modern and contemporary design from around the world, and get an inside look at the hottest home trends.

(P.S. - High Point is not open to the general public)

--allie

Tags: High Point Market, modern furniture fair, modern furniture, contemporary furniture