The House by the Sea

Published in The Gloss magazine, August 2007

On a warm summer’s morning in 1926, Irish designer Eileen Gray drove her MG up the narrow winding mountain roads from Menton to Roquebrune-Cap-Martin and parked in the railway station. Reaching into the back of the car she took out a rolled towel containing swim suit and bathing cap. Having spent a fruitless past three weeks hunting for a suitable site on which to build the house of her dreams, she was taking time out for a swim. She crossed the narrow path and walked along the cliffs. After a few hundred yards she stopped and looked down the cliffs. To her left and half way down was a ledge: she had found the site on which she would build one of the most iconic houses of the twentieth century. 

Some eighty years later when researching Time & Destiny, my novel of her life, I arrived into the same station by train from Nice. Crossing the tracks I climbed over a low stone wall and wandered along a narrow asphalted pathway, following in the footsteps of Eileen Gray, hoping to view that house. 

Eileen Gray was born in Co. Wexford in 1878 to an Anglo-Irish family whose ancestry dated back to the 15^th-century English peer Lord Gray. At the time of her location quest, thanks to her pioneering lacquerwork, furniture and interior design, she had been the toast of Paris for a decade and now she was about to break architectural ground. For the three weeks, without success, she had searched up and down the Côte d’Azur for a site on which to build a house to be designed by her, constructed to her specification and furnished with her pieces.

After a few minutes the path fizzled out. Intrigued by the natural beauty and isolation of the area, she clambered over crumbling walls, through the scattered Levant pines and brushes of wild rosemary and euphorbia before coming on a small natural terrace cut into the honey-coloured limestone rocks with the ever-changing turquoise of the Mediterranean below. The swim was forgotten. She had found the perfect site on which to build her perfect house. 

Her design was tiered and carved out of the rock face; embracing the natural contours of the site, it used light and wind to best advantage. With walls of glass, the house looked out towards the sea. She called it the E.1027. E for Eileen. 10 for Jean. 2 for Badovici. 7 For Gray. She gifted it to Jean Badovici, the Romanian architect, ten years her junior with whom she was having an affair at the time. 

During the three years of construction, Gray remained on or near the site. Dressed in a trouser suit, silk shirt and a jaunty bow tie, she buzzed up and down the treacherous mountain roads in her roadster checking on details, ensuring every aspect of her design was adhered to, refusing to compromise.

Seen from the sea, the finished villa, complete with masts, looked like a ship at anchor. Sailcloth membranes protected the terrace from the sun; life preservers hung from the balcony deck and reclining chairs suggested a cruise. On land the design was equally impressive. By using the same wooden floors, plain white walls, shutters and lights, the exterior terrace seamlessly converted to a second living room. The furniture was chrome, leather, wood, glass and cork.

She poured her very soul into this house, where she and Badovici spent many summers, frequently with house guests. One guest was modernistic architect Le Corbusier who, when Eileen was absent and with the encouragement of Badovici, painted a series of eight sexual murals on the walls. Calling it an ‘act of vandalism’, Gray insisted that Badovici write to Le Corbusier demanding the murals be removed ‘to re-establish the original spirit of the house by the sea’. Le Corbusier retaliated by publishing photographs, claiming his murals ‘burst out from dull, sad walls where nothing is happening…an immense transformation, a spiritual value introduced throughout.’

With the break-up of her relationship with Badovici, Eileen Gray left E.1027, never to return, though, reputedly, she was amused to learn that the German soldiers who occupied the place during World War II used the murals for target practice.

The dispute with Le Corbusier continued until Badovici’s death in 1956 after which Le Corbusier built an elevated 2-storey hostel over looking E.1027 – he had already built his famous Cabanon there in 1952 - and dedicated himself to the preservation of his murals. In 1960, E.1027 was bought by Madame Marie-Louise Schelbert of Zurich. Five years later, Le Corbusier’s body was found at the base of the cliffs. Against doctor’s orders he had gone swimming. He was 78 and it was assumed that he had suffered a heart attack. On her death, Madame Schelbert willed E.1027 to her doctor, Peter Kägi, who, in 1991, transported and sold Gray’s furniture in Switzerland for today’s equivalent of €390,000.

The house was vandalised by squatters in June 1998. Despite an international campaign spearheaded by Irish architect Patrick Mellet who urged the Irish government to acquire the house, it was bought by the Conservatoire du Littoral and declared a French national monument. Ironically, E.1027 owes its salvation to Le Corbusier’s murals. Without them, rumour has, it would have been left to rot. Plans for its restoration are being prepared under the direction of architect Renaud Barrès who despite repeated phone calls stalled on allowing me to view.

I made the journey anyway, hoping that with me on the spot he would relent. And at the very least I needed to see for myself the house that had consumed Eileen Gray in the same way as she had consumed me while I was researching and writing Time & Destiny. The pathway was dirty and dusty, littered with cigarette butts, empty cans, dog faeces and a smell of urine. A vandalised telephone box and padlocked gates marked the entrance to E.1027. The hostel and Cabanon showed signs of activity; Barrès was reputedly in residence but there was no relenting.

E.1027 is a sad shipwreck of a house with crumbling concrete, smashed windows and, saddest of all, shattered dreams. But the Mediterranean, barely visible through the tangled overgrowth and chicken wire fencing, is still turquoise, still dashing against the honey coloured limestone rocks.

©POR