By a nice spring weather, members of Maisons Privées were welcome by the owners of the two Jaoul houses in Neuilly-sur-Seine. Coffee, cookies in the shape of Catalan voutes, explanations and visit of the houses from basement to roof, it was indeed a great joy for all to discover in such casualness the extraordinary precision and attention to details that Le Corbusier brought to his design. We also realized that le Corbusier was more interested in drawing and planning than work surveillance…

General presentation

The “A” and “B” houses were designed by Le Corbusier to be the separate houses of André Jaoul and his son Michel. They share the same 1,000 sq meter lot and are joined by the basement. Built in the fifties, the houses were drawn in 1937, with the apogee of the industrial era. These houses are an expression of the “brutalist” style and are based on the Modulor principle.
The “A” house faces the street and hides the “B” house. Their orientation is different. They share the collective space: garden, concrete terrasse and basement with parking spaces and a common heating system. Both houses of around 200 sq. meters each were designed so that two families could nicely live in the 3 floors of each house.

A few pictures of the visit

Machines to Inhabit by Le Corbusier

« A house has two goals. First it is a machine to inhabit, aimed at giving an efficient help to speed and precision in the work, a thoughtful and attentionate machine to satisfy the needs of the body. Then it is a useful place for meditation, and finally it is the place where beauty exits and brings to the mind the calm that it requires. » Le Corbusier.

The Modulor

The modulor is an architectural notion created by Le Corbusier in 1943. Standardized human silhouette being used to conceive the structure and the size of housing units, like the radiant City of Marseilles or the housing unit of Firminy-Green, it was to allow, according to him, a maximum comfort in the relations between the man and his vital space. Thus, Le Corbusier thinks of creating a system more adapted than the current metric system, because directly related to human morphology, and hopes to see one day the replacement of this last. It comes from a portemanteau word made up from “module” and “golden section”. Indeed, the proportions fixed by the modulor are directly related to the golden section. For example, the relationship between the size (1m83) and the height of the navel (1m13) average are equal to 1,619, that is to say the golden section with a margin of thousandths.

For those who count on going to Brussels within the next 5 years, there is a house easy to visit: Living Tomorrow will open the doors of its new house and office of the future project on March 1, 2007.

Living Tomorrow 3 is interested in all current themes of housing namely: ecologic construction, green energy, home office, numeric convergence and “smart home” (please tell me what that means after visiting).

A visit of “the House, the Office and creative Industries of the Future” will last about one and a half hour. Standard admission is 10 € per person. Source and photo credit: Living Tomorrow

Visit of Le Corbusier’s houses

You can still join Maisons Privées and sign for the visit of the Jaoul houses built by le Corbusier in Neuilly-sur-Seine in 1956. This visit will help to get familiar with the Modulor concept and the corbusean theory of ‘machines to inhabit”. Practical details of this visit on Sunday March 11 afternoon will be send next week to members.

Philippe de Chabot,
President

We are actively preparing new visits as well as a trip to Belgium.

See you all soon and may the wishes of success of our organization materialize in 2007.

Philippe de Chabot,
President