|
Down a quiet, leafy footpath
in the Côte d’Azur hides perhaps the
most modest piece of interesting architecture
of any historical period and yet it was designed
by one of the twentieth century’s most influential
and least modest architects.
The Swiss born Charles-Edouard
Jeanneret, or Le Corbusier as he preferred to
be called, was a frequent visitor to Eileen Gray’s
and Jean Badovici’s nearby Villa E-1027 which
Gray had designed over 30 years before. He fell
out with her after he got up early one morning
and painted an unwanted mural in her house. An
‘act of violation’ as she described
it.
Le Corbusier had become friends
with another neighbour, Thomas Rebutato, a former
plumber who owned and ran a small café
cum inn next door, L’Etoile de Mer. It was
whilst the two were planning the redevelopment
of the site, with the intention of building Unités
de camping, that Corbu persuaded Rebutato to give
him a sliver of adjoining land on which to build
a cabanon or small hut. He built it as a model
in minimal habitation and as a birthday present
for his wife, Yvonne.
Designed in December 1951 in
less than an hour, building work lasted only six
months and it was completed in August 1952 using
rough pine boards for the exterior and plywood
and oak pieces for the interior, mostly prefabricated
in Corsica. The initial idea was to have used
aluminium cladding which would have had a completely
different, if not incongruous effect.
The surface area is about 16m2.
There is no kitchen: the couple took all their
meals, including breakfast, at the café,
to which a door in the small entrance corridor
provides direct access. There is no door to the
WC and the bidet abuts the headrest of one of
the beds: Yvonne covered it with a cloth. "Not
a square centimetre wasted! A little cell at human
scale where all functions were considered"
as Le Corbusier described his smallest ‘machine
for living in’.
He devoted much thought to the
interior detailing, using vivid red, green and
blue panels on the ceiling to contrast with the
yellow-painted floor and wooden warmth of the
walls. The ceiling is low to allow for ample storage.
He painted a colourful mural along the entrance
passage. The little furniture there is is made
of recycled materials: crates for stools; railway
carriage reading lights; porte-abus for a lamp
and so on.
At the time Le Corbusier had
made two long trips to India and it is possible
that he was influenced by Hinduism and Sannyasa,
the notion of a life of renouncement and poverty.
Certainly the cabanon expresses the simplicity,
truth and freedom of the individual. He made precise
plans of Punjabi houses and appeared as interested
in their building techniques and way of housing
as he was in their architectural forms. He used
these plans to design the Peon houses, simple
structures that were to have been sited behind
the Governor’s palace in Chandigarh.
The layout is conceived more
from the interior than with regard to connecting
to its immediate surrounds and yet this makes
perfect sense. There are only two windows, which
are small, but the shutters fold back inside to
reveal mirrors that reflect the turquoise sea
and, framed by pine and palm trees, the other
not-so-modest machines for living in across the
bay in Monte Carlo.
Although the cabanon has virtually
all one needs to pass a non self-catering holiday,
Le Corbusier also built an even tinier hut a few
metres away for an atelier to work in, the shade
of a large Carob tree linking the two.
Thirteen years after completing
it, he drowned off the coast, during a long swim.
This may have been an act of suicide, his wife
having died in 1957. "How nice it would be
to die swimming towards the sun", he once
remarked to a colleague. He also designed an austere
but elegant and, of course functional, concrete
tomb for Yvonne and himself and it sits in the
Vieux Cimetière at the top of the old town.
The ensemble of cabanon, atelier,
café, the unités de camping (built
between 1954 and 1957) and Villa E-1027 has become
an historic monument. The first two are in good
state and can be visited. The others are currently
the subject of research and restoration.
Le Corbusier’s Cabanon
is open to the public in September. Although the
2003 timetable is not yet available, it is likely
to reflect that of 2002 when guided visits were
organised by La Commune de Roquebrune-Cap Martin,
Office du Tourisme, 218 avenue Aristide-Briand,
tel: + 33 (0)4 93 35 62 87, fax: + 33 (0)4 93
28 57 00, office-du-tourisme.rcm@wanadoo.fr.
In September 2002, visits were organised on Tuesdays
and Friday mornings at 10:00. €8 for adults;
€5 for students; free for children under
12.
La Villa E01027 is in a poor
state of repair and has been described as ‘dangereux’
but there are plans to restore it fully. In September
2002, guided visits were organised on Monday afternoons
at 15:00 and it is likely that this arrangement
will continue in 2003. Apparently the best view
of the exterior is from the sea.
|
