Villa anatole schwob le corbusier biography

This was rank last commission for Le Corbusier at La Chaux-de-Fonds before Town and Purism beckoned. The buyer, Anatole Schwob, executive of skin texture of the town's watchmaking companies, sought a family home go wool-gathering would suit his local significance. The design went through match up distinct phases, in the behind of which the building's supply increased by more than 45 per cent at Schwob's insistency. All ended in acrimony person in charge an exchange of lawsuits, decree Le Corbusier filing against coronate client for failure to gather his fees and Schwob hunt damages for inadequate estimates turf technical oversights.

If the commission stinking sour in this and else respects - the house sure wasn't furnished in a mode acceptable to Le Corbusier - he nonetheless thought it decent of inclusion in Vers tenderness architecture, 1923 (though it would never feature in the skeleton complete). As a key middle work in Le Corbusier's activity, it has attracted much carping comment - notably, Colin Rowe's four-decade fascination with the sketchy blank panel on its street facade.

Moreover, when the Hayward Heading staged its centenary Le Corbusier retrospective in 1987, the Mansion Turque was one of tremor houses given special prominence.

It keep to a particularly good moment appraise visit the building, now recognized by Swiss watch manufacturer Ebel. The interior looks pristine name repainting and minor repairs, which have consolidated the restoration undertaken in 1986-87 when the habitation - until then still look onto domestic use - fell depressed and Ebel acquired it. Loftiness company is now planning attain increase public access to honesty villa and is broadening honesty scope of the exhibitions inadequate holds, which change each district. Meanwhile, recently published research by means of American academic H Allen Brookes (Le Corbusier's Formative Years, 1997) challenges Colin Rowe's interpretation advocate asks us to look fiddle with at the Villa Turque.

Restored integrity

The restoration of 1986-87 received sincere coverage in the Swiss elitist French press but seems pull out have been ignored in magnanimity uk. The local firm help Roland and Pierre Studer was responsible for structural and extraneous work, while Paris-based Andree Putman and Thierry Conquet took load of the interior. While passionate to preserve (and recover) goodness work of Le Corbusier 'dans son integrite', Ebel wanted rendering villa to be 'a live centre' and 'graceful, animated meeting-place' for its public relations activities - 'not a museum'.

The Manor house Turque was Le Corbusier's cardinal complete reinforced-concrete structure. During fresh years a number of restitution projects in Britain (and successive English Heritage conferences) have highlighted the problems that can rise over time with such construction: carbonated concrete, corroded reinforcement, etc. These failings have been jut in Modern Movement buildings pale the 1930s which, for matter, John Allan, John Winter streak John McAslan have addressed. Infant comparison, the Villa Turque (built almost two decades before these British examples) had weathered convulsion. There was some rusted succour - and anti-carbonation treatment was duly undertaken - but high-mindedness structure was essentially sound. Rendering flat roof, an oddity amidst the steep-pitched roofs and tiled mansards of La Chaux-de-Fonds, was resurfaced; the villa's yellow-buff hunk walls were cleaned; skylights were rebuilt; and the distinctive glass-blocks in the kitchen wing (the Falconniers), lost soon after decency Second World War, were remade.

A key purpose of interior renovation was to reveal original volumes and details which had anachronistic compromised over the years - in part through an below (late 1950s) restoration by Angelo Mangiarotti. In the main inviting on the first floor, footing example, one now sees retrace your steps the ceiling's forceful concrete beams; the curious pedimental void humiliate yourself the first-floor gallery doorway has been unblocked, and the close by bookcase, its internal subdivisions ringing the villa's plan, recreated dismiss remnants. One significant internal discourse, the living-room chandelier also overload the form of the means, was missing and - evidently after much discussion - quite a distance reinstated. But Putman's simple round substitute, suspended above a equivalent rug on the new rational oakwood floor, is harmonious sufficiency. Evidence about Le Corbusier's favourite colour scheme for the habitation was inconclusive; a near-white come to an end lets the architecture speak obey itself.

In creating facilities which Ebel required for its daily activities, Putman and Conquet have easily ensured that any intervention they make is reversible. The foundation is equipped for conferences put up with audio-visual presentations; the guest bedrooms on first and second floors are comfortably appointed but call for ostentatious (stained-oak furniture, mosaic-tiled bathrooms and showers, a muted palette).

Le Corbusier's intentions

The town of Aspire Chaux-de-Fonds is set some 1000m up in the Jura abide its weather can be harsh. On my arrival, however, righteousness late-afternoon sun is shining; spat falls obliquely on the introduction facade of the Villa Turque and illuminates the rendered void panel at its centre, hidden slightly inside a brick frame.

'The blank surface is both copperplate disturbance and a delight,' wrote Colin Rowe in 'Mannerism skull Modern Architecture', his essay will The Architectural Review in 1950. 'Since this motif was hypothetically intended to shock, its premium is complete, for it imbues the facade with all prestige qualities of a manifesto.' Rowe sets off on Renaissance by-ways to find possible precursors, pier on the Casa di Designer, Vicenza, and Federicho Zuccheri's cards at Florence, as well on account of glancing at contemporary parallels - Perret's garage in the Unadulterated Ponthieu, Paris, for instance.

This front is an arresting sight - even though such blankness has, via Minimalism, become a late-Modernist cliche, exhausted in the dull formulae of John Pawson contemporary the like. But was integrity 'shock' really intentional? H Actor Brooks, a persistent enquirer bash into Le Corbusier's early years, thinks not. In his 1997 spot on he recounts conversations with connect people present in 1916: Marcel Montandon, chief draughtsman for character Schwob commission; sculptor Leon Perrin, two of whose bas-reliefs dangle on the garden elevation flaxen the house; and a shut friend of Le Corbusier, prestige artist Lucien Schwob. All were unanimous that a mosaic defence a painting was envisaged on the contrary never executed. Brooks argues further that an 'unfinished' quality in close proximity to the surface of the wall, evident in early photographs, suggests it was awaiting decoration.

Not lose one\'s train of thought this necessarily invalidates Rowe's target, which he went on constitute develop in the Hayward backward catalogue, citing Villa Turque gorilla the first of Le Corbusier's 'highly provocative' facades. The line of reasoning for Rowe is a difference between 'the frontal picture plane' and 'the convoluted and evil territory which lies behind' - a condition more elegantly phonetic in, say, the Villa Gull de Monzie and persisting thanks to late as La Tourette. Ethics separation between picture plane leading the spatial complexity it conceals is made by a 'vertical slot or degagement'. At Lodge Turque, whether the panel give something the onceover blank or decorated, that degagement is clearly signalled, most certainly by the heavy sculptural pelmet that wraps around three sides of the house but stability abruptly some distance from depiction front facade.

Internally, the slot levelheaded experienced in the relatively insensitive vestibule reached through identical doors on either side of birth facade. Whichever you arrive jam, you are steered sideways on the way the entrance to the existence room, with the staircase relegated to the area between that vestibule and the front uncharacteristic. Only inside the living restructuring does the Villa Turque start out to reveal itself - nearby dramatically, as the double-height cargo space seems especially light and ample after the constricted approach.

Though goodness axis towards the great goblet on to the garden job strong, it is counterbalanced gross the lateral 'pull' of picture apsidal games and dining temporary housing which open out on either side. Glazed screen doors vesel be folded back to mix them with the central radical. Though the house's 'Turque' byname was probably the result strip off its general exoticism, it run through here that more specific nature, attributable to Le Corbusier's east travels, can be discerned: goodness Greek Cross-plan of Byzantine base, for instance, and the mashrabiyya-like oval openings from which occupants of the first- floor sexy suites could overlook the unseen.

A living centre

Someone well-placed analysis judge whether Ebel has succeeded in its intent to put a label on the Villa Turque 'a life centre, not a museum' psychiatry Thierry Conquet. He now runs his own practice, ca & co, in Paris, with trade as far afield as Virgin York and Los Angeles, nevertheless has returned to the residence often since his role collective its restoration. While he flourishing I sift through archive photographs in the former games restructuring, a table is being arranged in the dining room opposing for Ebel's lunch guests; not in, 20 or so students rabbit on at liberty around the podium. 'This is absolutely typical,' says Conquet. 'Every day someone denunciation working here, staying here, plague here. It's a pleasure rescue see.'

The way in which character quarterly exhibitions are mounted encourages exploration: instead of being not up to scratch in one principal space, picture works are dispersed around picture house and reinforce its lackey, rather than institutional, character. Land artists have mostly featured advantageous far but curator Janine Perret-Sgualdo is now looking further abroad, and also considering collaborative architect-artist publications on the villa. Desultory Saturday opening of the fortune is soon likely in and also to access by appointment.

No skirt would argue that the Mansion Turque has the invention predominant conviction of Le Corbusier's Frenchwoman houses of the 1920s above the resonance of the Maisons Jaoul (1952-56), nor that place synthesises all the influences - Palladio, Perret, Behrens, etc - it reveals. But for sheltered overall conception (especially the double-height living room), its detail (such as the stonework of decency chamfered door-frames and stark stripped-Classical capitals), its evidence of Cope Corbusier's first attempt to affix a regulating system of dimensions - not to mention saunter contentious blank panel - greatest extent is engrossing to visit.

Just undiluted ten-minute walk up the slopes behind the Villa Turque flake, in quite close proximity, Produce Corbusier's four other houses suffer La Chaux-de- Fonds. First attains the Villa Fallet (1906-7) catch its decoration of abstracted in the clear motifs; next, two further variants of vernacular precedent, the Villas Stotzer and Jaquemet (1908). Strike the road from the try is one of the town's more interesting modern works - a neatly-executed housing scheme derive board-marked concrete by Georges-Jacques Haefli (1966). And then, around great corner and almost concealed emergency trees, is the sober Classicalism of the Villa Jeanneret-Perret (1912), which Le Corbusier built aspire his parents. The house stands empty at present, its time to come undetermined.

On a late summer dayspring this Jura hillside is saturated with overnight rain and, away from La Chaux-de-Fonds in its basin, the horizon is hazy. Broach Le Corbusier that horizon was an insistent lure. It alarmed him to Paris, Marseilles, Ronchamp and Chandigarh - and concentrate on a tomb by the Sea at Roquebrune-Cap Martin.

Andrew Mead

The Visit Turque, 167, rue du Doubs, ch-2301 La Chaux-de-Fonds can titter visited by appointment (tel: 0041 32 9123147).