Pinnable

Villa Savoye in Poissy, on the outskirts of Paris, counts as one of the masterpieces of modernist architecture. Designed by architect Le Corbusier, it was built between 1929 and 1931, following the five principles he laid down in his manifesto Les cinq points d’une architecture nouvelle: the house is ‘a box in the air’, elevated from the ground by slender columns called pilotis, it has a roof garden, and the absence of load-bearing walls allows for a free floor plan, horizontal windows, and freely designed facades. It is, according to Le Corbusier, a machine à habiter, a house designed with the same functional considerations as a machine. It’s also a machine à émouvoir, but mainly for architecture buffs; like other modernist houses, Villa Savoye looks very smart, but it’s not for people who are looking for a cozy home.

The recessed exterior walls of the ground floor are camouflaged in dark green to make the upper floor look like it’s floating in the air, and they are curved on the front side to allow a car to navigate comfortably around the driveway underneath the house. Once inside, there are two ways to get upstairs. Le Corbusier believed that a staircase separates one floor from another, while a ramp connects them, thus creating a totally different sensation when moving from one floor to the next. But the villa’s ramps are fairly steep, and visitors will probably prefer the familiar sensation of climbing the spiral staircase instead. Le Corbusier’s other novelty that never received wide acceptance is the roof garden, invisible from the outside, which actually is a patio with surprisingly few plants, and a major cause for constant leaking — which is a good thing: everybody knows that all good architecture leaks. A visit to Villa Savoye typically takes 1½ hours.

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