Layout LC.indd - Professur Schett

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