Villa Savoye

Villa Savoye is a modernist villa in Poissy, in the outskirts of Paris, France. It was designed by Swiss architects Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret, and built between 1928 and 1931. A manifesto of Le Corbusier's "five points" of new architecture, the villa is representative of the bases of modern architecture, and is one of the most easily recognizable and renowned examples of the International style.

Given that Villa Savoye is an excellent example of Le Corbusier's Machine for Living ideal, it is no surprise that the house employs a number of mechanical devices for easing manual tasks. In the sun room, for instance, the large windows crank open with a lever. In the kitchen, the cabinets efficiently slide open on either side. The kitchen is all utilitarian white, in contrast to the almost decadent master bathroom with its aqua tiled bath tub. He also exposes radiators throughout the house.

Spatial dynamism flows throughout the house as the walls bulge and curve to push and pull at the spaces and entice the occupant from one room to the next. Views of the landscape are framed to draw the eye into the frame and beyond. Le Corbusier uses ramps to speed one from floor to floor. In one homemade film, he rides a bicycle around the roof. The building is a spatial playground.

"Unlike the confined urban locations of most of Le Corbusier's earlier houses, the openness of the Poissy site permitted a freestanding building and the full realization of his five-point program. Essentially the house comprises two contrasting, sharply defined, yet interpenetrating external aspects. The dominant element is the square single-storied box, a pure, sleek, geometric envelope lifted buoyantly above slender pilotis, its taut skin slit for narrow ribbon windows that run unbroken from corner to corner (but not over them, thus preserving the integrity of the sides of the square)."