[Music]
We welcome you this evening. I'm Donna Dunay, for those
of you who don't know me. I talk here a lot apparently.
I chair the International Archive of Women in Architecture,
and this evening we begin our third annual symposium.
This year's symposium is entitled Women Inventors and Architecture.
oh can you hear me down here can you hear them
We've been inventors in architecture 1700 to 2000,
quite a request. In any case we were very fortunate to
have a wonderful set of presenters
come forward with wonderful talks that they want to offer here at the school.
And so tonight we begin with a very special person
and a keynote address from Dr. Carmen Espegel. Carmen comes from
Madrid where she is a Ph.D. in architecture. She's a full
professor at the design department the school of architecture of Madrid
and has lectured in the U.S., Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, Mexico, Colombia, Brazil, Argentina and Portugal.
Carmen also is known to us through her research into the topic that
you'll hear about tonight. Everything you'll hear
during this symposium is an intellectual [inaudible]
Some of this material has never been heard before, some of the names you likely
will have never heard of. What Carmen will
present this evening was presented to me as an architecture faculty with quite
a different authorship. So it is very fascinating, it should be
fascinating to the interior designers, the landscape
architects, the architects, the industrial designers.
We thank the college diversity committee for helping to
support in part Carmen coming here. I've known Carmen
for a number of years since she acquired this wonderful prize.
we were delighted to have it come before I think you'll be fascinated by what
she's going to present. I'll say one last thing oh i should say
more about her actually her research focuses on women
in architecture and housing research into gender architecture has
been developed through her doctoral thesis and
resulted in several publications.
She leads a housing research group with a focus on collective housing
and teaches within the master of collective housing program
in Madrid. She participates with the doctoral dissertation
group on housing in the school of architecture in Porto
and lectures the master's courses you can see she's a busy person
for the master in housing the university of Roma today.
Among published books on the subject she has several volumes on collective
housing in Spain. This note I'll mention, on Friday
morning she will be the last speaker in the art and architecture [inaudible]
In 2003 with Concha Fisac she created the firm espegel-fisac architects
whose works have been awarded in various occasions received wonderful awards.
I myself with two other faculty here
visited Madrid and visited her projects and they're
wonderful in terms of trying to do the most with a situation
that is certainly the very least. So we welcome Carmen this evening
and I hope you enjoy her presentation.
[Applause]
Thank you very much, it's a honor for me to be here,
yeah I really feel proud to be invited by
the IAWA, the International Archive of Women
in Architecture. And it's a privilege really to explain
some of the researches I have done.
This talk is in relation with one house built by one
woman a woman a also another also with a man
but it's very special building it's very special for
a lot of things well first of all I did a research
my PhD is on this house it is incredible but
when I started this subject my director I asked him
what can i what can i study i didn't know anything so
i asked him for some subjects and he gave me a list of 10 and well i started
to check a little bit on them and i
discovered this house that i didn't have any idea
of it but also i hadn't any idea of the
architect who was a lady a girl and my woman
island grey who signed the house with her boyfriend on that time the
jambalovich um invitation to an intellectual journey
uh i use the the same well and the kind of
the same title as she uses inside the house
because the house is full of sign signals to be able to discover it's
not an easy house to understand in a first look
you have to go deep and deep and deep because it's very very com
complex house so she uses this title not the intellectual but at this i
add that word because i think her architecture is very
intellectual and i will try to explain it to you today
um
in the um they wrote both of them wrote a few texts and
she built several houses all of them for her she was an arrest
aristocratic she come from an aristocratic family
and she didn't she doesn't need to work for surviving
because she had the expenses from uh from
their family and her family so she did what she wanted
without uh with totally and absolutely uh
freedom um but which is the only house he signed
because i will tell you during this speech
how was the relation between them uh to be able to
uh discover and to build this house so in the text er er the collect this is
odud uh more or less from eclecticism to doubt that both of them wrote in a
very famous uh magazine at that time the architecture
vivant they provoked a kind of dialogue between
them um asking what what was architecture
what was the role of the of the architects on that time
and by the way she asked her uh so you advocate
a return to feelings and she answers yes but once more uh to an emotivity
purified uh by knowledge enriched by ideas and from which wisdom
and appreciation of a scientific advances
are not excluded it is not necessary to ask
from artists anything other than being or they
or their time well uh he she was the um
um critical voice in that dialogue you see the
the invitation of ayash and also we we see these other
texts the houses is full of text texts that that explain the uses of it
because it is quite um obscure in a sense and quite abstract
but she at the same time she has to translate a little bit
to the user how to manage and how to use the house also because
the house
works on functionality but not that functionality that rough functionality
that you would use to work no that basic she
was invented a kind of i i
i told that functionality a kind of a spiritual
functionality so she goes beyond the function
and discover new functions whenever you are in the
in the house and so she uh in this dialogue between them
she has a critical balls uh she was very critic
with the mother movement but avicii was the intellectual of the couple
uh was architect was a romanian architect who moves to
paris she was not an architect she was an interior design
and she designed furniture on rocks i mean
she entered uh two architecture by the back
door of the architecture by a way that in that time for women which was not
easy for most of them so she was a self-taught
and she learned by reading the magazine that
uh vadavichi gave gave her the architecture
he was the director of this magazine a very
important magazine on that time on the 30s
in paris and the house was built between 1926 and 1929
and in the south of france in rockefeller or
karmartan wherever you want um and as i told you she was very very
critical with the rationalism of the mother movement with
the um um how can i see that rational
rationality without any sentiment any uh um feeling
any uh particular so everything was really a universal
so she wanted to uh as she says and she considers the harsh laws of
modern mechanism as a necessary transition but to
theoretical intellectual in cold i think
most of the women of the 30s did a habitable
may say that habitable the cold architecture of the mother movement
so she pro demands a return to emotion to pathos
to feelings and to a motivity in architecture but purified
by knowledge this is a marathon it was an issue and a specific
issue especially only for the house she was involved also
in eileen gray was involved also in the
design of every paper every page of this magazine
and as i told you magazine was composed on this issue was composed by a text a
critical test a descriptive descriptive text
of the house and also of photographs taken by her and some um
photographs um transform with uh with colors
he was eileen in the beginning of the 20th century
uh when she moved uh to france to paris she discovered paris and she decided
that she wanted to live there for the rest of her life
uh as i told you she came from this aristocratic family iris andrew iris
and she had a good um education excuse me she had a good
education as a lady of a high up
higher class but the dedication for being a wife not for being a
professional but anyway that education she
lead that education a little bit to the arts and when she moved to paris she
went to different
schools of art and she started to do this is a very nice contrast to see
her at the beginning of the century in 1913
and to see her in the 20s almost at the end of the
20s how she changed she in a sense she changed in the same way
as their projects and their designs if we
uh take a look on this one of the first designs
the extremely distant she started to
do lacquers with the japanese artists who taught her how to
make the these lacquers but she goes a little bit uh
further introducing new colors and new materials on the
traditional lacquers but if you take a look on this screen by
one side and by the other is is her you know
we can recognize her work because she always try to come
for confront uh as here figurativism and abstraction
or as in the picture i showed you before more uh she was a kind of a king
of article on the beginning of the century
and then they moved to the modern architecture uh
in the in the 20s
so the first works i i just will show you a little bit of
some of them quite important you could recognize some aspects
that we saw in the screen i showed you before
some abstract uh design but also take a look on the sofa
the sofa de pira piragua sofa the pig rag
iraq so far uh absolutely the code absolutely i mean these
exquisite uh materials with this shape is impressive does
the contrast between this object for instance and that
and that design she was always working with
with all positions of things that nobody could uh put together but she got
it in a very uh unique way uh
at the 20s you started to copy and paste as we as i would say
before in our class copy and paste so how to learn to do
something take a model and try to copy
to understand how it is built she worked very much
with um
okay don't worry she worked very much
yeah yes so she was very close to the object
she was designing and she produced one object and then refine and do another
one and then transform into another one so she was improving and their objects
every time in direct relation with the workers that
build it build them in this case the black and white
table is of course a i know match and much to the
neoplasty neoplasticized architecture of the dutch
groups but here there is a change here there is the first chance comes here
through this um chambray it is a very specific place for women
is the only room i know specific for us in architecture because
we know a lot of male uh rooms on the fun walk
the place for cards i mean there are a lot of places uh
the studio for many but this is a very specific uh place for us
and nowadays we linked that place with sex but uh at the
beginning it was a place specific for us link with literature
with resting and for the for the days that we we had
our bad days it was a place for us to keep away
to keep us away from the family so but in this
interpretation of the boudoir the championship
we can find what is a very common um aim of her architecture
a communist of excuse me a common space
only one space not divided by any partition world
but specified by the uses of the furniture so the
furniture explains us that there is a right
writing table here or a place for a studio there is a
divan to rest a little bit there the the screens are always in in her
architecture because the screens let her to cover and to
and not too open directly to the interior so
take a look on the entrance the entrance is always in a way that
avoid the views directly views to the um to the divine or to the out to the
bed so in this moment she still keeps
some designs from her period of the article
but we are seeing real really a very modern space okay this was the
couple they met in the 20s and they were together
for a few years and he was the inspirer and in the
sense of he learned he introduced her to modern
architecture he show all the new projects that were
being built in europe at that time in the euro
union uh soviet junior through this um through this magazine called laxity
um that he published with albert moranzi in the so we see how she
cut her hair she uh cancelled part of her community to be able i don't know to
be on time or to be on time that means on that time uh girls uh
uh had to transfer into a more i can i say after after the victorianism
uh crisis uh this new um
intellectuals these intellectuals wanted to find a way to
live and to survive uh absolutely different to the
to the one before so they have to invented new rules
of uh behavior they have to um invented uh even um how to
uh how to live together or not so they were inventing everything in a sense
they were trying to look for a new way of being together
ain't really had relations with women and men at the same time they also
were
trying to find a new way of living and which was on that time very
attractive a very attractive man around 15 years
younger than than she than eileen and i think he found in her
uh inhaling someone that could for in one side could uh build or could
do something by herself because she had money
and also because she had the the knowledge of this uh interior design
and she can do it she can manage so she uh here trust in her and
um ask her to do some projects for him the first one was
a little um house interior design for a house in in versailles and the
second one was the one i will show you now 18 27
well the 1827 is a house that is built by
eileen john vatovici gray a 1027 means that i mean jambalaya gray
it's nice because first of all is it's a complex
it's not a it's not just a couple i mean it seems that it's cover uh
or protecting him in this in this warm job with guards and so on with
it's really it's very nice so they built it in the south of france
here we have monaco so this is the mediterranean area
uh here we have the final the ending of the alps
and and then the the slope as you can see here is
really very strong and in this area this is a train railway
and from that part to to the sea there were no other things
that oranges and lemon trees and it was a
typical uh mediterranean area so the houses
used to be in the upper part of the of the
railway and but but she asked him ask her to go to the south
of france and to look for a place and
she went all around the coast looking for different places still
she found that one the only way to reach this place
is by these uh depart the car here in the station
in the rail station and then you walk walking
around 20 minutes to the house so the house is what it was
i mean the place the plot was chosen by her
to have a very uh protected place for them for their love and all these things
and the other one that we saw now that came
later is a cavanaugh delicacies and i'm sure you know camanole cover i'm
sure you know it no but he built it
in 1970 58
55 i don't remember exactly but years later
so on that time it was the only house was the 8th and 27th
this was the the picture from the mountains of the house so the
house was not only a house it was a house
but also a plot how she managed all the plots
to use the outside as if it were an inside here we see
that section of the of the house a very modern language of course but we will
discover through this um through this talk how the house is
linked absolutely with the mediterranean knowledge the
vernacular houses and also uh with the um the house
the english house uh that knowledge of um intimacy
comfortability that also comes with with hyena
so it's a kind of combination of all these different
uh subjects in one object that is not uh that is um is a unit
it's not part different parts of uh of a different context is a unit she called
she go get this unity uh with a big effort i will show you okay so
she was an interior designer she um eileen draw as an interior design they
used to draw with plants and then the elevations
used to be folded okay like that so and she continued with
the same technique uh whenever she uh i studied as he draw
architecture for hers it was almost the same uh
to design an object of designing a house it was exactly
furniture or through the tiny house but it was exactly the same
um very abstract drawings they are very difficult to
understand because everything is is one line
is the same thickness for the different lines
so you you can have a i don't know and a seat you know it's drawing the
same way uh as a staircase or as a as a tree everything is quite abstract
but they are very precise even if you at the beginning you
don't understand very well they are very very precise so
here we have the the several uh elevations and the plan
is a house that started here from the very beginning of
the plot the house is located in this area yes to
get the uh the biggest distance to arrive to the
entrance this is one of the points you also
perceive that the house is a little bit inclined from
in relation with the with these steroids these are the typical terraces of the
uh trees the fruit trees that are planted in all
this but she moved she turned a bit the house
to get a better orientation to get a more south
orientation and here we discovered that the house
has is an hell more or less with the house maison here and this is the ground
floor i will show you in a in a more clear way from the from
the sea we discover a very modern object
but it's not as modern as we uh expected why because this is not
long earth this is an only because the house has
different coats one coat for summer one coat for wintertime so it
changed very much it's a kind of animal with different
coats for different conditions uh weather
conditions so this is not extremely talking
a fener longer it's just an opening in the only covers that arise
from one side to the other um the combination of different type of
windows absolutely we can find maybe seven
types of windows so there is not only one horizontal
because he learned from the mediterranean we can we have to use
the better window for the specific function
so here it's very important to see the sea to to be able to have sun and to
be protected this is why the house is full of different complexes
system complex systems of protection because she talks
about the windows as if she talks about the eyes
so we have different protections to be able to support
the threat in the sun and etc
okay from the end plants we have this vision which is very
protected we don't see almost anything and all these terraces are dominated but
some type of architecture some kind of open architectures
and the house has more than one entrance has a lot of
entrances uh we have one entrance by this way another
instance by this other way in the north another one in the west
in the in the east the house is very close to the west
to protect it from the sun and very open to the south
to see and to perceive the mediterranean sea so the knowledge is
really impressive the knowledge of the local culture for instance
after this zigzag entrance we take this little path and we arrive
to this corner which is uh there's a canopy that led you to
go into inside but we will see how ambiguous
the entrance is also the house adapted their shape
and their volumes to the different terraces
and then we arrive to the garden to the lower part
lower terrace who also is also built some
artificial i can say artificial architecture
to control this this space in this area and here we have the sun swimming pool
because in this exceptional way of looking everything
she was very sophisticated and i thought oh we need a samba
but if we uh talk i mean we um built this uh this uh sambal this uh
swimming pool with water we this will be full of
mosquitoes so especially if we just put some sand and
we can take some baths but without the problem of the
mosquitoes
from the sea we have this view here you can see a little bit more what
i was telling you about the handrails and and the owning with textiles
and this is the view from the west so the house is very
um specific for each orientation as i explained the south orientation
with the terrace the living room the main entrance
the entrance is over there the main entrance and
uh the main uses are here in the lower part
we we have only this porch and some small rooms for our guests and for
the for the services for the service
and as you see this is absolutely close and controlled by these louvers
this double double door that can control the sun of the west
of the west area
the roof is a is a modern roof but not not as modern as
as others that have different uses here uh there is a a kind of homage
uh to the russian architecture to the constructivism architecture
with this lighthouse at the end of the staircase that
explains that they can use the roof also but not very much i mean it's not
prepared as a as a garden proof
and then transcendence is really ambiguous we are right
till uh by this little path with the human limb here we are
to that canopy this is a red curved wall that attacks you very much
it's a kind of unfinishing but whenever you are there
we discovered that we discovered the entrance of the kitchen
that comes from the our restructuring families i think
i mean the kitchen was always in england
mainly even sometimes in the in the basement
uh separated from the from the house they were very exquisite with
in terms of smells and so on so that is one part that is out of the
house as i told you the outside in the mediterranean areas
are not uh treated as an outside it's a
it's the best room of the house the garden is the best room
of the of this house so you go you are right
here this is french this is an entrance this is a window like a vertical window
she works with a different procession perception of the
of the glasses so there is there are sunglasses
absolutely transferred another translucent uh she works very much with
that to provoke until you see inside and here
we see this louvers these
elements that control absolutely the sun they are a copy an absolutely
perfect copy of the louvers of knees if you go to the center of nice
you can find that louvers absolutely the same but
of course she added a new thing she added
uh these um horizontal or this sliding in horizontal it's
typical modern so she makes a and and
two words that in in a sense we were we thought
modernity and mediterranean area is really linked but it's
it is not true the modernity most of the times
took the form of the mediterranean but not the
the the deepest uh uh content of that of that
mediterranean sense okay whenever you are here you don't
know what to do because there are two entrances what to do she
has to explain a little bit what you have to
take of course well this is a in the smaller
entrance and these are uh lets you to go into
another little vegetable open vegetable to the
outside and there is a toilet just behind this
uh and you can see here and in the other
in the opposite side we found a door a bigger door
and two texts that says
and in the other one we read um uh the fans are here i think it's the
fans
okay and it's the faster here it's inside this is andre
so go in slowly so she is preparing you in a
in a very i don't have to say a special way
to introduce you into the house whenever she talks about the door
and i'm gonna be a little bit uh faster now because i i'm taking much more time
than i was expecting so whenever she talks
about the door she says a door an entrance is
always a discovery is a mystery you have to keep the mystery of what you
are going to see uh and later after that entrance
and this entrance is really really a mystery
okay in the south we see uh the terrace and northwestern because
this is the living and the main bedroom and
uh the covering of the uh with this textiles and all these uh
maritime elements typical for from the mother movement
and the hundreds uh the tube typical tubes for the hundreds and so on
but this is very very specific and also these elements these louvers
can be
dispenser in winter time and in winter time
and month of uh in summertime in the garden as i told you the garden
is the best room of the house so even they have
chairs the table these pavements with different
colors and and different um
some of them are brilliant other are less really under the different
seats and so on
and the sun the sun the swimming pool for having some drinks the explanation
of the house is always in terms of use how to use that
or how to discover that or how do you can
take i mean the the way of living she was designing a house for a living
for a living of a in general a generic human being but also at the same time
very very specific so this was a house for
inviting guests and so she had to design a place a big place to be able
uh to collect all the tables of the house
and putting all one joint to the other to be able to have 20 friends having
lunch there in a very very um open uh way of living that
is typical of this of this moment obviously
well the plants are very difficult also to understand they are difficult because
this is in a staircase around the staircase and a spiral staircase
this is the entrance i told you with this round
red wall and this ambiguous entrance to a day out to an outer vestibule
into the interior house whenever you enter you go
just so we turn twice one two three times just to enter into the house that
way is very also mediterranean this is a zigzag system that we use uh
for defense in in the south of europe uh as a friend system to enter into the
towns and to autonomous house and she learns from
that and it's expressing
that in this house very very well and then we have
the main room the the living room and the main bedroom with the studio
uh the bathroom which is interior and the toilet which is
exterior and sense you can enter by outside because
there are a lot a lot of entrances different entrances from different
places because the house is open every time
this is why she designs different screens different
elements to control the intimacy the open doors that is very
common in in in the south excuse me what doesn't matter in the lower plan so we
are right by this way and this is really
uh think uh as a very functional status for the service not for the guests
needed for the owners the owners use these others from outside
and these different entrances so everywhere i mean
this house could uh um could leave several people without
almost seeing themselves with very very um
in a very isolated way okay i will show you some of the plants
i did to understand because i draw the plants not
only because i love to draw which is true
but also because i it was the only way to understand the house
and to understand that in this house is very difficult to cut
where into a furniture interior design started
and when i started architecture it was absolutely impossible
for me to understand without drawing it so i did
i did a drawing in 3d and i mentioned just to understand some of the mechanism
that has the house which is full of different mechanisms
of course like in all modern architecture if you have um
study with the architecture of the russia in every
in every room you can find a washing lava washing
it was a sink you can find the sink but also the houses of the cruise are
full of bidets everywhere every room has every day
because not only uh it was a kind of sexual control no
control yeah uh on that time it's true
so even but the eugenie of the modern movement
is expressed with the use of those
things and elements so whenever you arrive
from the sea you pass through the shower you clean yourself and then you enter
into the into the main room but also this uh can be used as a
an element an isolated element with a corner
the lecture corner can the reading corner excuse me
can be transformed into a little bedroom with its own bathroom and here the same
you cross you go up with the staircase
go through the bathroom and you enter into the main room
um everywhere is this kind of elements are everywhere
okay if you see the elevations uh they are really different
they they are not similar they are very particular each of them
but but it's a unit and this is what i uh
i'm always astonished about that that house it's full of
different uh windows and doors take a look at this window it's absolutely
different than this other and it's absolutely different than
this and that that okay most of the critics of of
of this architecture that i have to say pass this architecture
arrives to the history of architecture and
it wasn't really a miracle i i don't know why but it was
really a miracle but that architecture which is
part of the history of architecture is a mixture it's a mixer and i think that
is its value we uh it's not something absolutely pure
and net and completely under the standards of the modern
movement is a mixture and i think that's it's
its biggest value
okay inside outside it's impossible it's impossible to cut
this little cupboard or to separate them with the car
to the uh disappearing from the land or from the
louvers or from the window it's really a complicated question okay here we
found
a water tank a water tank and that covers
what is also very typical from this place which is the am
summer kitchen winter kitchen they also copied it
from that place okay
so you um see how uh she designed in a very complicated
way very in the midst she could be designing this part this
element you see this element is designed here in
a bigger scale with a lot of uh
different elements for the hearts for the shaves wherever now the
the different cupboards inside the staircase but at the same time this
is another scale the roof and a section so she always was
working in this in this way
of course this is so abstract now she take
out the the context of the element so she isolated an
element she transformed that element in a very
very abstract element and then she has to explain how to use
it at the same time it's very fun okay so here we can find
shopko or you see the entrance you turn and here we see directly to the sea
and we turned to the right and we found the main uh
the main room in the multipurpose room and this was a little element in the
screen furniture to have these uh
coats and
umbrellas
this element that separates it was very criticized by the car was here
who loved this house and who was always working with this ambiguity
of who was the
the designer of the house even stanislas von moss
describes that this house could be done it could be done by the
congress here it will be uh resigned by the corruption
and this is why we will see at the end how the court we share appropriates the
house
with some drawing paintings okay we continue and we discovered just when
we entered this marvelous multi-purpose space
it's in a space that yes the furniture explains how to use it it's not a bed
that is a divan it's the same as in the in the bedroom
there are no beds in the house and the customs are more relaxed
during the summer time and even in this uh social
um social and and cultural class the manners were much more relaxed than
in a in the city so here is a divan full of
different colors that means you never knows if the bed is done or
not and so all seems very open and very uh
strange you know and the um the combination of the different is also
interesting because she comes from an english tradition and
english traditions always talk about comfort the
tradition of the house and the tradition of the furniture so
those if you compare this uh
furniture with the french for for instance with the
le carrozier and pierce and charlotte furniture of you compare
it with the one from miss van der rohe they are
absolutely different this furniture is the first condition is
the comfortability and it's absolutely opposite
to the others that have more they say they are more um
like a pamphlets they have to sell an idea
in a comfort way i don't know how to say english
so they are uncomfortable if you have sitted in the
in the mias chairs of the room you know they your button goes out
from the chair which is impossible to understand but this of course is a
is a is another work now this is a work for uh
being relaxed and being comfortable it's different
also the racks and during the time she had a
house in the in paris and she sells uh all this furniture well not different uh
previous furniture and also uh rugs different tracks
uh the centimeter and and this round so you have the corner for the
relax the siesta very typical from the mediterranean is a reading corner
and you have the music corner which is here on the right
and you have the leisure or the relaxing corner
in this part and behind that wall the the
little shower the button and so on in this screen this is a screen that
lets you to close this area a little bit from the
rest and the fireplace just in front of the other fire which is
the sun in the military okay
the colors everything was composed with this collage system so the window
is composed with these uh chart marine marine chart but also with the
different elements that compose this choreography of the interior
in the other side we look to the other side this is the entrance
we see the little um
dining room and the bar which is in this beach who
lets you to go into the uh into the bathroom as you see again the exact to
come into the bedroom in a very protected in a very protected way
okay the um geometry is really simple all the different types and
systems for plastic possibilities as she explains here they are very very
simple so this is just a break and it is maybe
displacement of this corner from the from the main volume of this element uh
that is a bread a break in a fold this is used for a table and this
is used for the corner of the house and this is used for the main bedroom
i mean she used all these very simple systems
uh in for all the different elements that compose the house so in
the furniture we can see this element that has this
they built in
head headboards all these elements this is very typical
from her uh she uses and she uh design
a lot of them in the different houses she owned
and everything is uh hidden and yes some text
explain us uh the uses for each element now for the
pillows or for the mosquito net and for the different the war and so on
but she was so sophisticated with the with the light and with the mixture of
the natural lighting and artificial lighting
she worked with this idea of an affect of the lamp um
incandescent incandescent light but she wanted to have a much
better light so she was working with different colors
in the uh for the glasses to get a white the white light this is why
you you have here well you can see really
two different colors for the for this last screen
oh for instance this is this is very nice and sophisticated
element is a is a table who has three different access of uh
uh turn turning access so you can get a perfect
uh she designed the perfect system to have the table in the
in the way in the place you need with this element that is
also for the book okay everything is designed in the same
way as the house uh this encore and this
is
you know why this one tell me why it's because
okay in a chair with two um elements like that you're always sitting
in the same position so here you can move
much better so the mobility is is uh is uh higher and then you can rest in
that seat in that chair for a long time for more time a
long time than in the in the normal one unconformist
someone which is not comfort with their with the word of the bible prevent them
was the do you remember that um
of that time so this is why the this idea of
inflated non-inflated elements
okay um i'm describing maybe too much the different elements
uh
okay so sorry but i uh i started to describe which i didn't
want to do it but uh it's impossible not to do it okay
here the table for the uh for the dining room
and what is the the purpose of this table this
table has to be light to move it only by one or two persons
has to be inside outside so has to be in the
in the terrace and inside so the light must be designed within the within the
the table so the light is adapted to the table
and she was very sophisticated with the noises as i told you and with the smells
uh so there is a cork element that avoid every noise of the dish of
the plates uh on the table so uh and you could also
enlarge that part to introduce the the different uh
meals and so on um inside and outside here we have the same almost the same
effect the cork the different elements that come forward
and so on and the glass not to have any dust
and to be able to place the fruit directly without any
any other elements very very sophisticated
in a sense well the different types and the different colors of course
uh in this composition of uh different parts
in the collage in a collage way so here we have some drawings that
explain a little bit all these elements that i was trying to
explain to describe you if you will go through
the main room we have uh the space for the
for sleeping and the space for studying and in the space for the uh
the washing and then the bathroom and then you
throw it outside the same scheme also these elements that i i love
because
it confirms all type of different things that are
in in in the red cup in the billboard so you see the clock
that can be turned to be seen through i mean from the bed can be turned
or the switches and the table that is also
can be uh adapted close or open depending on the use and the different
the two glasses blue and white that transform the incandescent bulb
into a light into a white white light and this element it's so
strange in in braille built with uh
it's a plastic very uh special for that time
all these smaller people plexiglass it was a place so all these
modern people wanted to use all these different materials
that come from the industry or from other
fields so this is just a covering for the for the mosquito net
to be hidden or to be hidden behind that plastic element
okay continue we go through the some details this lamp in
in the house she built whenever she finished
this house she uh or even at the same time she
bought another plot in the mountains because i i'm sure she did
she knew already that she was clean and she would
in here in this second house tempi apalia it is called
she goes a little bit further with this element and even
it moves from one side to the other side of the bed
uh but it's almost the same and the same element okay
of course it's a is a very light element round that could
uh support only really light shots lighter
things and this is why she wrote a short leisure so it's a kind of a mysterious
every every second well the abstraction and the you know and the
figurative as i i started the beginning is in every detail uh
perfectly explained
i think the bathroom is one of the worst areas of the house
i may say that i think it's the what remains of the rest of the of the
rooms so the uh i think it's a little bit
uh stretch of this entrance and exits and so on
but uh what i really like is how she managed to transform and to the
context an element a well-known element as a
video or as a bathtub um she the context
that element for the uh using these for instance these are brilliant
steel or this folding of the widget that nobody knows what is it no
i love that she has to write with it just to explain that he said it so first
she took out a function and then she introduced another
another time the explanation
okay
the in the lower in the ground floor
we found this element this is the room for the guests with two
entrances also isolated as the rest of the other rooms and you
know this table because even in all the tv
uh sets you can find nowadays this table everywhere it's a table 8 and 27
is a table that can be it was designed to be able to use it from the from the
bed to have a breakfast or to have whatever
you know inside the bed so this is why it's
asymmetric the excess is asymmetric and it has this round element open to be
able to use it from here okay so the last uh
i would like to stop just uh one minute here
as in the description of this element um he's a screen of his excuse me mirror
is a mirror that she describes as for a man to be able to cut
this fight
so that is the juices i love from eileen grey how she transformed a
very daily common and they use into a
marvelous ex expression of life imagine not to design this element uh
just for cutting this part over
kitchen is a very uh small kitchen and it has as i told you these two uh
possibilities the kitchen of wintertime and the picture of summer time this
weather led us to use the the kitchen the
outside all over the year
and it's also quite complex but of course she knew about the what
means to be uh in the south of in the south of
europe in the mediterranean so the the roof is not a normal roof
it's a double roof so the the beams are inverted
and she decided to incorporate another layer of this roof
to and so this is ventilated there is a cross-ventilation
and so that protects much more the radiation of the house and
this is a staircase to go to the roof and the windows
all the house has a design of windows the patent was signed by badobichinos
like her uh but the drawings are by her because
they are the same exactly drawings as the rest of the of
the houses and as the rest of the designs we saw and
these windows led the house to be permanent
i i really ate it
yes with a permanent horizontal ventilation during the summer time all
completely closed due in the winter time
and we found it a completely from from floor to sea
or just as this because this can be almost hidden you cannot see the the
difference between inside and outside but another room another window
this window covers the the room of the for the service for the cleaner so it
has to be different to uh till here is a
um she uses this glass this opalescent glass not to see the interior but in the
upper part you have a truss transparent
okay i i don't have time to to tell all these uh
little things but i would like to finish with
uh le corbusier and
his um the hottest car comes from an accident that
he had one of the propellers of the boat cut
her leg in that mediterranean area he used to come because he was very very
good a close friend not from badavichi and they love women and wine
and and they were very close friends in between 1938 and 1939
he they developed um an extraordinary um obsession of painting all
white uh walls he could find in the houses of
of the friend of his friends so one of them was vladavichi
and um the corbusier asked him to paint some of these frescoes in the in the
villa and they tended to eighteen twenty eighteen twenty seven
and uh she uh he says uh he painted nine murals
but i only found eight and nowadays there is only
five inside the house they are really aggressive
eileen gray saw that as a as a rape uh she said command violence as a rape
it was um it was a way of may
make the house belongs to him because as i told you he also with
different friends martins and others
were not very clear of the authorship of the house
and so here we see in that that is maybe the the technique
of this is a little bit different is the this is called a circle uh
and the technique is the marriage the contour style
is a mortar on the on the concrete wall and
you make a kind of surface how do you see sucrose
thank you very much and some of them you painted or not so
established she's a really great which and the children they never had
it was a very hard attack to i mean eileen
didn't want to come to the house anymore
and but even um badovich and i mean separated a little bit more from the
curve because it was an offense a really big offense uh on on
her on their work if i can say that here here he was
in he was working on these different uh murals some of them well there are some
of them in the entrance um finally the house woman
when vatavici dies the house passed to his
sister which was a nun
and but finally there was an option for the house and liquor museum
convinced the functional the french function of uh
to sell the house to a friend of him uh madame shelby switzerland
rich switzerland women who was a friend of him and he lived in the
house for long uh long periods before he built
the cavanaugh closer in the in the platinum
that was very close to this to this house
so um these paintings we have to say that well we have to
appreciate this paintings even if we think they are awful
and even we think it was a kind of like a dog pissing um
yes it's true it was like a dog some trees to make that their own
territory it was that it is absolutely
clear but anyway the house is still uh so it survived the house because of that
paintings thanks so good oh god so we have to thank uh the cover
here that the the house or the painting of the house but uh of
course you understand we saw the first pictures
well this is the restoration i have to say that the
restoration is a very bad restoration for me
not uh without any knowledge of modern architecture but any knowledge
of uh island grace architecture uh i have to say that all the glasses are
the same and transparent i mean there's a very
rough rough restoration but take a look at the
painting that area was defined
as a back as an area to be relaxed and it was the back not the front and now
this is the front it's just because the corbusier wanted
to give some light and some life excuse me to these uh
boring uh walls as he defined it so uh well this is the end of the house
but i think it's the beginning at the same time
of the of the future house this is in the living and the dining
room excuse me and the colors were really aggressive
but of course it was more contemporary art from that time of modern art
and but i think i also believe that the sexuality of
all these uh elements also damage a lot uh island gray
in here we see just the entrance of the house so we
started with the entrance of the house and we finished with the entrance of the
house and in this uh painting that you can
find in um this picture you can find in the
carousel foundation
painted with anilines uh by the crucial we see what happened with the entrance
in the entrance we only had uh this little element from
eileen ray and hot and lot by lithium
and the other one the fanservier or no there was a
sans for a forbidden entrance and he
produced this mirror leaving just a little part of some of the elements of
uh islands so it was really
a way of eating the the house of that in great design okay i
think i finished i just would like to um
i mean gray said we must build for people in such a way
that they can find once again in architecture
the joy of increasing power and the full realization
of their potential the mission above the mail
with ailing at the will as italy as 1926 presents a new development
in the liberation of human being body and soul
and as using the words of albert camille when someone fights for freedom combats
ultimately for beauty thank you
if you have any questions
yes if you have any questions i would like you
to answer very much
okay yes oh
you i'm curious about your opinion
because i mean was very well known
um
in her 90s the 70s she was discovering the 70s she was in
her 90s herself in her life ah yes
she died in 76 she born in 87 78 i would like your opinion about the
mechanisms of her being rediscovered and why she was
rediscovered because it always has to be thinking about all
the other people who have been discovered and whose work went to
the landfill well just now we still have it because she had it
in her
um she was well known under the point of a designer
on the i mean interior designer and furniture designer in the 20s a little
bit with this house but not so much i mean it was uh
published in several magazines and so on and
but she didn't want to fight with uh licorice and all these people and they
uh the chorus here and others hide her name regularly
or change their name or whatever so in in a moment i think well she
was completely uh boring with that time with the thing and she continued doing
all their projects by by by herself in the 70s she was discovered again
by um let me remember the name well
i cannot remember now by interior designs again
and through the interior design they arrive again to the architecture
so she was more linked with the interior than with architecture
that sensei i don't know if i answer you your question
more or less uh but i love this picture that chair was designed by her
for the second house for the champion paella take a look on the chair and take
a look on the old lady it's impressive though
to imagine a chair like like the house that you can
change the the textile you can cover it but it's so modern
i cannot imagine my grandma designed something like that
because she was like my grandma
okay that's all do you want any uh do you have any question
can anybody visit the house today yes yes you can visit it
there is a an american group called the island great friends or
i know 18 27 friends and who got the money for the
restoration reservation was done by um by a french
architect uh ernesto hatter that means
you can restore a gothic church or a modern architecture
the typical system of france very centralized and
in the houses you can visit it um whatever you want but then they made
this and this restoration and it's uh prepared for researching
also for being there and so on because the
united accounting that are behind the house
from the crucial
house these researchers
if you go to walker home
when did you first see the house
what was the circumstance when you first saw it
well whenever i say this this subject from my phd
i was working on the south of france in grenoble in the synchrotron radiation
facility and at one of the weekends i decided
okay i'm gonna visit the house so i went
there i didn't know where was the house
exactly and so on so i i run all along the coast
walking with my uh russian camera
and i discovered
something like that that was the first time
and then i took i i went several times i was completely
abandoned the first time i only saw it from
outside the second time i just passed the bottom of the
limits because it was apartment someone was living inside i mean there was a
kind of a free human being there i noticed when
i haven't i haven't met him i'll meet her
and yes i took seven years for developing this research and
i visited the house for three more three three years yes i finished uh i think my
uh 87 so maybe there we go
thank you so we begin a wonderful two
days
thank you
you