Return to Gallery
Villa SavoyeVilla Savoye DigitalImage©Bridgeman Art Library © Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris/F.L.C

Villa Savoye

Poissy-sur-Seine, France. Le Corbusier (architect). 1929 C.E. Steel and reinforced concrete.

Curator Note

"The ultimate "Machine for Living." Le Corbusier applied his "Five Points of Architecture" to create a light, airy modernist box lifted off the ground. Located in the French countryside, it rejects the landscape, asserting human rationality and geometry. It creates a fluid indoor-outdoor lifestyle with its roof garden and open plan."

Form

  • International Style: white, geometric, unornamented.
  • Raised on Pilotis (slender columns).
  • Ribbon windows (horizontal strips).
  • Free plan (non-load-bearing walls).
  • Roof garden.
  • Ramp connects the levels.

Function

  • Country retreat for the Savoye family.
  • Manifesto of Modernist architecture.
  • To integrate light and air into the home.
  • To demonstrate the potential of reinforced concrete.
  • To facilitate the automobile (turning radius determined the ground floor curve).

Content

  • The Box in the air: separation from the damp earth.
  • The Promenade Architecturale: the experience of moving through the space via the ramp.
  • Efficiency and hygiene.
  • Solarium: worship of the sun/health.
  • No facade: identical on all sides (mostly).

Context

  • Built between the wars.
  • Corbusier wanted to solve urban overcrowding with this style (though this is a villa).
  • Clients hated it (leak issues).
  • Reflects the machine age aesthetic (ships/cars).
  • Became a ruin, then a monument.