A Living Heritage: The Villa E.1027 by the Sea

Abstract

The work tells the story of a holiday home with a mysterious code name E.1027. The house is in one of the most beautiful places on the French Riviera, Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, a few kilometers from the Italian border. The villa was designed in 1926 by Eileen Gray in collaboration with her lover of the time, Jean Badovici. The name of the villa is an alphanumeric code with the initials of their names. Gray planned every little detail of the house, from the garden to the furnishing, and built a place where guests or permanent resident can relax and feel comfortable. Gray claimed that “Entering a house should be like the sensation of entering a mouth which will close behind you.” The Villa E.1027 is a masterpiece of modern architecture that overcomes the cold rationalism of Le Corbusier with the passion of a clever woman. Between 1938 and 1939, Le Corbusier wanted to take revenge on this woman by painting obscene sexist murals on every white wall in the house and he spent his life to control the villa’s fate. Today, after a long period of neglect and memory loss, we can finally visit the house, which has been restored to its original beauty and intimacy by a critical restoration that preserved also the Le Corbusier’s murals.