Must-Know Modern Home: Villa Savoye

This country villa for Pierre and Emilie Savoye is located about 20 miles west of Paris, in what was a rural area at the time of its construction. Le Corbusier (who worked for two decades with his cousin Pierre on this and other projects) took the simple commission and turned it into a concrete realization of his Five Points manifesto. In the villa he shows how much expressive potential is available using his theory.

The design can also be seen as the articulation of architecture's three basic elements: horizontal slabs (floors), vertical piers (structural columns) and walls (especially facades). Lance LaVine, in his book Mechanics and Meaning in Architecture, parallels Le Corbusier's search for meaning in these elements with physicists' turn-of-the-century discoveries of nature's constituent elements: electrons, protons and neutrons.

Technology, as used in science and engineering, was a big influence on Le Corbusier, and the Villa Savoye further embodies his notion of the house as a "machine for living" — an expression he coined. Yet this is always balanced by his view of the house as a machine to move you emotionally; it could be argued that this villa accomplishes both.

Development encircled the villa in the ensuing decades since it was completed, but the building's designation as a French national monument in the 1960s has allowed much of its original character to be preserved (not to mention that it saved the building from ruin after the family abandoned it circa World War II, and it was subsequently used for, among other things, a hay barn). The trees to the south of the square building are pretty much the same now as when the building was complete, though the open vista to the north and west has been closed in by trees that help block the school and other buildings on those sides.

The trees on the south assured that the family and visitors (arriving by car, no doubt) would first experience the house in an opening after passing through the trees. As we'll see, this promenade architecturale (a path strictly defined by the architecture) continues into the house itself. Le Corbusier had written about the approach to the Parthenon in Athens; Villa Savoye is a modern update to the treatment of approach.

Le Corbusier had written that "the house must not have a front ... it must open out to the four horizons." Nevertheless, the south facade is the most rear-like, stemming from the way the ground floor is not recessed in the middle, and because the roof enclosure is only barely visible. The approach shown here — the main approach — merely hints at what the villa offers.

One of the most distinctive aspects of the ground floor is the porte cochere that wraps three sides of the building. Le Corbusier's embrace of the car drove (no pun intended) this plan, so the space between the pilotis (slender columns) and exterior wall is wide enough for a car to pass through.

On the north side of the building, the ground-floor walls become semicircular, based on the turning radius of a car. One of the Savoye family's three cars (one for each member of the wealthy family) could then stop at the entry in the middle of the semicircle, before the chauffeur would continue on around the west side to park it in the three-car garage.

This north elevation is certainly more sculptural than the south side, and it also clearly expresses all of the Five Points: The piano nobile (second floor) is lifted above the ground on an even grid of pilotis; the walls of the ground floor are liberated from those columns; upstairs, a long ribbon window extends from corner to corner; the window also sits in front of the columns, exhibiting the free facade; the curved walls at the roof define one side of the roof garden.

One of the subtly interesting aspects of the design (covered at length in LaVine's book) is how the structure appears regular but in fact changes from the grid when needed. This view of the entrance from just beyond the pilotis shows why: The center column is aligned with the door behind it, meaning that if the structure were in a regular grid, a column would land just behind the door, blocking entrance to the house.

So Corbusier doubled up the columns in one direction (left to right in the photo) and shifted them in the other direction; the paired columns and connecting beam are visible behind the glass around the entry door. This structural flexibility comes from using concrete for the columns, beams and slabs. The material easily allows such manipulations.

But this doubling up and shifting of the columns (what LaVine calls conditional structure, versus the exterior's rational structure) does not simply serve the front door; it allows for a central ramp that extends from the ground floor all the way to the roof. This view of the entrance hall reveals what the family and visitors were confronted with: the ramp on one side, the spiral stair on the other, and a washbasin placed on a column in between. (Beyond are the maids' rooms and the laundry room.)

Ramp or stair, each means of vertical circulation makes turns as it rises to give people glimpses of different parts of the house and the surroundings. Both end up on the second floor at a hallway near the large living room and the equally generous terrace to its south. A glass wall adjacent to the ramp opens to the terrace and reveals the exterior ramp that heads up to the roof garden.

Before heading to the living room, let's take a brief detour to the bedrooms. Here is the bedroom in the southeast corner of the house. (Floor plans can be found at the end of this ideabook.) While it shows how well the ribbon windows frame the surrounding landscape, this view is also interesting because it illustrates how Corbusier used color throughout the interior (and even the exterior, given that the ground floor walls are painted green, and the famous International Style exhibition and book of 1932 describe the roof enclosure as "blue and rose," though since its restoration those walls are white). Further, the wall with a rounded corner on the side is actually created by the tub in the adjacent bathroom bumping into the bedroom.

Access to the master bedroom occurs through a corridor alongside the master bath. This view from the bedroom shows how the two spaces are connected by an undulating bench in tile that echoes Corbusier's famous chaise longue (visible in the entrance hall photo and the next photo, of the living room).

This famous view of a famous bathroom illustrates the open plan that Corbusier promoted as one of his Five Points, though it does it in a subtle way. Like elsewhere in the villa, the columns do not relate to enclosing walls; recall the columns sitting just outside the semicircular glass walls on the ground floor. Here the columns are freestanding, removed from the walls, even if by only about a foot.

The living room is a large space that is generous even by today's standards. It can actually be seen as a progenitor of today's large "living areas." Here we are looking from in front of the kitchen. The foreground space would be used as the dining area; the fireplace implies a separation between it and the living room.

The extension of the horizontal window from the living room to the terrace gives cohesion to the exterior (first photo), but it also provides a consistent framing of the surrounding landscape, regardless of whether one is inside or outside.

The living room is connected to the terrace through a huge sliding glass wall that faces south. This exposure means plenty of sunlight enters the living room and the terrace, where a concrete table provides for outdoor dining.

A lot of the design starts to fall into place once we step outside onto the terrace. Here the sky — gone since we entered the porte cochere — reenters the picture. The house can be seen as a tripartite layering of experience and meaning: The ground floor is a sheltered connection to earth that also helps raise the living spaces above it; the second floor is the enclosed domestic realm that is protected from the elements yet frames the trees and other surroundings through the ribbon windows; the roof connects one to the sky and a larger context visible beyond the trees.

That view beyond the trees is the reason for a north-facing window that Corbusier cut into an enclosure that provides some privacy and a sense of containment on the roof. This frame (which would not have looked at a building in 1931) directs one's gaze far in the distance. It is the culmination of the promenade architecturale that moves from the car to the ramp (or stair) that zigzags alongside the interior and exterior spaces. It is an experience well worth having, and thankfully this home's national monument designation allows that.