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This house asks to be courted. It contains many mysteries: the telephone booth where Dr Dalsace could receive calls from his patients without being overheard, with its fi ne woody smell, where the lights are turned on by the pressure of feet on the fl oor, a place to hide; the tiny knobs for opening cupboards; the folded aeroplane wings in the bathroom that conceal the storage spaces ... Corners and edges are all rounded to the touch, with no harsh shapes to distract one‘s attention. The black lacquer of the built-in cupboards rolls in curving waves and refl ects the light from the windows that overlook the garden. Each cupboard contains particular fi ttings for keeping things. Shoes and hats have their own purpose-built spaces, corresponding to their shapes. Pierre Chareau designed the cupboards to be opened both from inside the bedrooms and from outside in the corridors. One day I found my daughter huddled inside a cupboard, trying to overhear the sounds coming from the bedroom. Bluebeard could have hidden his wives behind more than fi fty different doors! I have come to know the house, and its lines no longer look like a cold mathematical drawing to me. I run my hand from one material to another, constantly discovering new subtleties. I penetrate deeper into its silence. The house is transformed by changing light throughout the day and the seasons. At nightfall, fl oodlights outside wrap it in a grey light, fi ltered through the glass bricks. It becomes cl0udy and abstract. After my grandmother and my mother, I am the third woman to have lived in the house. I have never related to the house on a technical level. My perception does not strip it down as architects do, dazzled by its perfection - that of a masterly machine. I am not a specialist, just someone in love with this place. I walk through the smallest secrets that it conceals, although everything may seem open and visible. I play hide and seek, seeing without being seen. On the second fl oor, along the corridor, I even lie down and look into the great room through the black veils of the bookshelves, watching what is going on below. The interplay of appearing and disappearing continues with the sliding doors; these create the secret of intimacy. Part of the great room, when the screen is closed, becomes a small study with its furniture and its day-bed where my grandfather took his afternoon nap, next to his telephone booth and near the open metal staircase leading down to his consulting room. My grandmother‘s bedroom next to the bathroom is enclosed on the garden side by a double sliding wall which, depending on whether one wanted to be invisible or to see everything, could shift from the transparency of glass to the opacity of duralumin. The bathroom is divided into feminine and masculine. The two sexes live side by side in this house. The bathtub is on the feminine side, the shower on the masculine. The subtle arrangement of the folding duralumin doors that nowhere reach the ceiling screens the body but allows conversation Pierre Chareau 147 to continue. You are wrapped round by all the materials of which the bathroom is made. The perforated sheet metal screen above the bathtub opens onto the gentleman‘s shower area. The lady of the house, from her bath, can wander through the trees. The shaving mirror can be made to disappear. The coat hooks curve in a gentle smile. So well designed that they need no other trimming, they look intriguing, like sculpture. The tiny white mosaic tiles have a kaleidoscopic effect. Underfoot is cool terrazzo. From outside the house may look small, but when one gets to the foot of the main staircase, the real dimensions of the space become apparent. One is only aware of this inside. The glass wall of the great room, forming the outer façade, absorbs and refracts the light. Light invades the room with a disturbing intensity. Its presence is absolute - monumental white light, almost dizzying, with no escape. It makes one feel unable to move. Sitting on the couch covered with tapestry designed by Jean Lurçat, I notice the way that it prevents a direct gaze, and how it appears invisible from the courtyard. The great room is a beating heart. It is like a modern cathedral, where eleven orange and black columns studded with rivets and bolts impose a rhythm and form the framework of the house. Their different sizes, their colours, with black changing into orange, the striking size of the bolts, all are amazing. Wherever one looks in this house, something is happening. The more one looks, the more one discovers the volumes, the different materials, the meticulous details. They are incomparable, their determinacy leaves no place for vagueness or uncertainty. Their perfection is as precise as a musical score. The spaces are modulated by the fabric and perforated metal screens, the curtains hung from curving rails. Behind each division lies a secret waiting to be revealed. The same design, the same materials are used throughout the entire house, which has no sense of segregation between a ‚piano nobile‘ and servants‘ quarters. Subtle, almost imperceptible elements imply a high degree of abstraction. I found that the grey and black house also contains colours. The orange columns, the tapestry-covered furniture, the warm wood, the books on the bookshelf wall all give off signs of life, sparks of joy. Colour bursts forth. The house also has its own smell, made up of the scent of books, waxed parquet and rubber fl oors, a smell created by the passage of time. The Maison de Verre, with its many screens and secrets behind open and cl0sed doors, looks onto a paved court yard, dry, deserted and austere, but on the other side lies a garden like that in ‚Le Grand Meaulnes‘, with hundred-year-old trees rising into the sky. I have loved this place passionately. Sometimes I have felt the wish to leave, but I always come back. DOMINIQUE VELLAY