Domestic Life Art: Villa Savoye

He drew inspiration from the geometry of ancient Greek and Roman structures. At the same time, however, he was proudly living in the machine age, and looked to cars, ocean liners, factories, and even grain silos as more contemporary sources of influence. In 1923 Le Corbusier wrote: “The house is a machine for living in.” This was a radically new view of the domestic sphere, one that is evident in his design for the Villa Savoye.

The Villa Savoye sits in a tree-encircled field in the Parisian suburb of Poissy. It is constructed with man-made materials of concrete and glass, and the layout of the main entrance assumes that visitors will arrive by automobile. From the outside, the house appears as a rigidly uniform rectangular mass propped up on piers, a trademark of Le Corbusier’s style that he called pilotis. Inside, however, the living space eschews this static austerity.

Within the Villa Savoye, the architect has created a space that is dynamic. It contains ramps, elegant curves, splashes of color, and a clever interplay between interior and exterior. The bathtub, for instance, covered in whimsical blue tiles, includes a built-in chaise lounge with access to a view outside. Looking out through that horizontal band of windows makes the surrounding grounds seem almost like a mural. The roof garden, at the top of a ramp, is another of Le Corbusier’s essential elements of the modern house. Here there is an undulating, sculptural windscreen with a small rectangular cutout, again framing the view as if it were a painting.