Home as a promise of protection and freedom

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Home as a promise of protection and freedom

Gianfranco Guaragna

ДОМ КАК ОБЕЩАНИЕ ЗАЩИТЫ И СВОБОДЫ

Джанфранко Гуаранья,

Абстракт

Вилла E-1027 родилась в результате великой истории любви между Эйлин Грей (1878-1976), аристократическим дизайнером ирландского происхождения, и Жаном Бадовичем (1893-1956), румынским архитектором. Именно так авторы решили назвать свой дом на Лазурном берегу, когда планировали и строили его между 1926 и 1929 годами. Он был построен на труднопроходимой полосе земли между морем и железной дорогой. Выбранное имя, своего рода буквенно-цифровой код, было придумано Эйлин Грей как символ их отношений. Действительно, E означает Эйлин, 10 -- буква J Джин, 2 -- буква B в Бадовичи, а 7 -- первая буква ее фамилии. В «maison au bord de mer» (дом на границе с морем) можно без особых усилий заметить все «лекорбузериан- ские» принципы современной архитектуры (свободная планировка, ленточные окна, сад на крыше). Несмотря на то, что Ле Корбюзье уже сформулировал свои «столпы современной архитектуры» в 1923 году, он воплотит их в жизнь только несколько лет спустя на вилле Савойя. Вилла станет манифестом рационалистической архитектуры. Но там, где Ле Корбюзье представляет дом как машину для жилья, Эйлин Грей представляет чувственные пространства, где жизнь может течь свободно. Однако идея защиты и свободы проекта не может быть переведена в упрощенную формулу комфорта и безопасности, поскольку вилла E-1027, скорее, изначально нацелена на представление идеи безусловного состояния близости. Эммануэль Кокча, интерпретируя это с философской точки зрения, говорит, что Дом -- это «моральная реальность в совершенстве: психический и материальный артефакт, который позволяет нам существовать лучше, чем это сделала бы природа». Но самое главное, добавляет он, - «прежде чем стать объектом, дом -- это эмоция, это надежда и проект жизни».

Ключевые слова: архитектура, Вилла E-1027, дом.

Abstract

The house as promise of protection and freedom. The Villa E-1027 is born from a great love story between Eileen Gray (1878-1976), the aristocratic designer of Irish origin, and Jean Badovici (1893-1956), the Rumanian architect. This is how the Authors decided to name their house on the Cote d'Azur, when they planned it and built it between 1926 and 1929. It was built on an arduous strip of land between the sea and the railway. The chosen name, a kind of alphanumeric code, was coined by Eileen Gray as a seal of their relationship. Indeed E stands for Eileen, 10 for the letter J of Jean, 2 is the B in Badovici and 7 is the first letter of her surname. In the maison au bord de mer one can effortlessly pick all the “Lecorbuserian” principals of modern architecture (the free plan, the pilotis, the ribbon windows, the roof garden). Even though Le Corbusier had already codified his “pillars of modern architecture” in 1923, he will only implement them some years later in the Villa Savoye. The Villa will become a manifesto of rationalist architecture. But where Le Corbusier imagines the house as a machine a habiter, Eileen Gray imagines sensual spaces where life can flow freely. However, the idea of protection and freedom of the project cannot be translated into the simplistic formula of comfort and safety, as the Villa E-1027 rather aims intrinsically for a representation of the idea of an unconditional state of intimacy. Emanuele Coccia, interpreting it from a philosophical point of view, says that the House is “the moral reality by excellence: a psychic and material artefact that allows us to exist better than nature would do. But most of all, he adds, “Before being an object, the house is an emotion, it is hope and a project of life”.

Keywords: architecture, Villa E-1027, house.

In order to oversee this paper about the House, in its most broad meaning of living, I would like to start from a peculiar statement made by Jean Badovici, life companion of the more famous Eileen Gray, and co-author (always ignored) of the small “Rationalist” masterpiece they achieved together.

The statement is apparently irreverent, if not vulgar, and it includes a term which lies outside the architectural language and which in a formal context may even appear inconceivable. In this case though, it can be used as a pre-text as it helps overlook the vulgarity and investigate the hidden meaning of the statement, possibly extracting its hidden meaning. To understand the latter, a short introduction is needed, starting from the work and leading to the theme itself.

The Villa E-1027 is born from a great love story between Eileen Gray (18781976), the aristocratic designer of Irish origin, and Jean Badovici (1893-1956), the Rumanian architect who at that time wrote for the influential magazine L 'Architecture Vi- vante.

This is how the Authors decided to name their house on the Cote d'Azur, when they planned it and built it between 1926 and 1929. It was built on an arduous strip of land between the sea and the railway, along the custom officer's path which connects Menton to Rochebrune. They also offered their own personal contribution to the labour needed for the works.

The chosen name, a kind of alphanumeric code, was coined by Eileen Gray as a seal of their relationship. Indeed E stands for Eileen, 10 for the letter J of Jean, 2 is the B in Badovici and 7 is the first letter of her surname.

In the maison au bord de mer one can effortlessly pick all the “Lecorbuserian” principals of modern architecture (the free plan, the pilotis, the ribbon windows, the roof garden). Even though Le Corbusier had already codified his “pillars of modern architecture” in 1923, he will only implement them some years later in the Villa Savoye. The Villa will become a manifesto of rationalist architecture.

But where Le Corbusier imagines the house as a machine a habiter, Eileen Gray imagines sensual spaces where life can flow freely. This kind of ship hoisted on the rocks, with all its spaces and furnishings, without excluding her companion, is the achievement of the genius designer.

The term “designer” may appear reductive, but if one thinks of the refined innovator who, as well as being the first to adopt the long-standing lacquering technique on modern furniture (learned from the Japanese maestro Seizo Sugawara) also experimented on her furniture items the use of aluminum, celluloid, bakelite, cork and tubular steel.

This almost “sublime” authoritative example of Rationalism appears as a paradox, it is not far from the site where the spiritual father of Rationalism, twenty years later, will realize his home/refuge and where he will use a language an extremely far from Modern language.

Le Cabanon, by Le Corbusier, despite the elegant linearity of its tiny interior, bluntly reflects its formal aspect in its name. It signifies a small architectural object, where a corrugated metal roof and the rough tree trunks of the facades clearly recall a shack.

A sort of ironic paradox appears as we learn that Eileen Gray and Badovici, who considered it the outcome of a constant dialogue between them, liked to call it affectionately “baraque”.

The “baraque”, as opposed to the monastic refuge that was realized by the Swiss maestro in the same stretch of sea of Roquebrune and where he will later die, is a spectacular spot where a “mobile” space full of light evokes Mediterranean atmospheres which outline reflecting on the pure white construction.

An inviting place where, in the Author's intentions, freedom and intimacy must coexist. The living room is conceived as an open space to be experienced together, and each room has a direct access to the garden, in order to respect the independence of the guests and of the hosts. Curved screens envelop and surprise opening and closing perspectives and points of view. Even the furniture unravels in a harmony of movements, from the sliding of the glass, the curtains and the shutters to the tables which open overturning and the drawers that open rotating along their orthogonal axis.

Eileen Gray will never live in this house as the great love story will end in their separation shortly after the end of the works. The Villa then belonged to Badovici. Gray, with aristocratic detachment, never claimed its intellectual property. She considered it a gift to her ex-partner.

Later Eileen will isolate herself and, even though she didn't give up her work completely, she was forgotten until her “rediscovery” starting in the early 70s of the past Century, shortly before her death.

The Villa E-1027 seems to share the same destiny as, after Badovici's death, it had different owners. The furniture was lost and the house ended in a state of abandonment until 2007, when an association was started. This association funded half the expenses for the restoration of the house. The works started in 2013 and included the building itself and the whole decorative apparatus with all the original furnishings.

Back to the statement, the daring counterpoint between the refined spaces and furnishings becomes particularly intriguing (this is suggested by the aristocratic lineage of the co-Author and partner of the protagonist) and the apparently improper term he uses to express a concept which is less banal than it appears. If, independently from the appearance, it is interpreted in its substantial essence, one should not lessen Badovici's statement: “architecture is where you can fart in peace”.

One cannot deny that this statement appears out of the architectural context. The daring combination may even appear blasphemous if compared, for example, to the concept of architecture outlined by Adolf Loos in his notorious reference to the mound adorned by a blade shaped as a pyramid. (1)

When Loos, in one of his famous “parables”, with a prophetic look, identifies architecture with a tomb, namely with the “monument” (in the etymological meaning of the word) that without any need of explanation, even in its most archaic meaning, induces reflection, and it refers to the essence of architecture. Badovici instead, when talking about architecture, probably refers to the house.

Regarding his statement, in my opinion, one shouldn't focus on the vulgarity of the word, but on the concept of the whole phrase. What encourages reflection is that, in order to express the idea of freedom, the Rumenian architect refers to one of the most embarrassing and intimate physical functions of the human being. It's definition in the Italian dictionary is almost more embarrassing than the locution itself. Reading that it is a “noisy emission of intestinal gas from the anus” one should neglect for an instant the perplexity caused by the deplorable juxtaposition to architecture and try to imagine the funny meaning his description can appear in a boy's mind.

The mischievous air that bursts out loudly in an impertinent boy's laughter can summarise the expression of pure infantile happiness that probably belonged to Badovici when he spoke it out.

One must point out that Badovici, apart from his creative images, does not use the term in a metaphoric way.

The term “fart” is not intended as a qualifying adjective as - for example - when using an informal language, it is matched with a certain theory or with an object or an issue, in order to summarize, in an ironic or contemptuous way, a drastic negative opinion. Considering it as a mere consequence of a lexicon tied to that particular artistic attitude of contempt towards the conventions and appearances of the bourgeois life would also be wrong.

On the contrary the term seems to be used deliberately to express a personal statement. Without removing its Significant (in its linguistic meaning of the Rovattiano concept of “pensiero debole”). One should probably focus on the word's meaning independently from the yoke imposed by its “Esponente”. (2)

The house must be able to offer both shelter and decorum, but, in the Author's intentions, the house is a promise of protection and of freedom.

The idea of protection and freedom of the project cannot be translated into the simplistic formula of comfort and safety, as the Villa E-1027 rather aims intrinsically for a representation of the idea of an unconditional state of intimacy. That statement probably intends to summarize the concept, in an eloquent and disrespectful way.

From another point of view, in a completely different context, interestingly Paul Auster offers indirectly this idea of intimacy, through a link which refers directly to a fart, counting it, with a series of other things, as one of the pleasures connected to the intimacy of the house. Here too the term is not used in an improper way.

The Author of “Winter journal” in his interesting autobiographic text that stretches from his early childhood to his mother's death, unrolls as a catalogue of a man's life narrated through his body and articulated in 21 legs, as many as the houses he had lived in up to that moment.

If we may consider the houses as containers of memories, where the memories of our lives are kept, according to Paul Auster it is as if the different homes become the notebook pages where one can find and arrange the chapters of one's life, each of them bound to specific memories.

In the first pages of his Journal he drafts a detailed list of physical pleasures and physical pains. But when he adds the pleasure of farting to the list of pleasures he is even more precise than Badovici, as he lists: “First of all the pleasure of sex, but also the pleasure of eating, drinking, being naked in a hot bath, scratching, sneezing or farting, staying in bed for an extra hour, turning one's head to the sun in a mild late spring afternoon or beginning of summer and feeling the warmth on one's skin...” (3)

Walter Benjamin maintained that the difficulty in reflecting about living in a house is that one must bestow to the house itself the image of a man inside the womb, together with a condition of contemporary existence. But when he clarifies that: “the original shape of all living is not inside a house but inside a shell”, while admitting the existence of the protohistorical cause of living, he admits the limits of the coexistence of needs. (4)

Our freedom, as Galimberti reminds us, is not absolute, but relative to a starting point, without which our mind would live in a desert without a probable direction, in order to reach a destination. (5). Protection and freedom promised by architecture, should probably transcend mere physical protection and formal liberties granted by conventions, and evoke the utopia of a suitable place for our most intimate pleasures and desires.

This is a human ambition, not far from Joseph Roth's character of the wandering Jew. Even if he says: “we only feel well in the place we are not”, he doesn't deny this place exists. His statement however may express a kind of unavoidable malaise which is as independent from the specific place as it is dependent from places in general, and doesn't necessarily exclude the possibility that human beings may recognise the desired condition of freedom and protection. The solution in this case is delegated to a different place from the one where one is. A place where we would like to be and we are not. An unidentified place at the same time so precisely determined as it is “other” that it denies, if not it's mere existence, at least the possibility of reaching it. A place conceived in order to question the possibility of satisfying this need, without ever denying it explicitly. This need can only be the House in its essence.

Emanuele Coccia, interpreting it from a philosophical point of view, says that the House is “the moral reality by excellence: a psychic and material artefact that allows us to exist better than nature would do. (6)

He adds that we don't build houses for protection from bad weather nor to match the space with the genealogy order or with our esthetical taste. “Each house is a purely moral reality: we build houses so we can host the part of the world - people, animals, plants, atmospheres, events, images and memories - which make our own happiness possible”. But most of all, he adds, “Before being an object, the house is an emotion, it is hope and a project of life”. (7)

References

He states that: “if we find a mound in a wood, six feet by three, with a blade shaped as a pyramid, we become serious and something tells us that someone is buried there. This is architecture.” Adolf Loos, Parole nel vuoto, Adelphi, Milano, 1984, p. 255

Significant “In linguistics, the element which represents the acoustic or visual image as a result of the succession of phonemes or graphemes that constitute the word. Together with the conceptual element the meaning creates the linguistic sign.” L'esponente in this case is related to: “Each term in the dictionary”. From the Dizionario della lingua italiana, Devoto-Oli.

Pier Aldo Rovatti and Alessandro Dal Lago operate an elision on the Significant, as explained by Garimberti, it is not mainly: ”for a taste of variation and novelty, but because these Representatives are a reading mode which only the arrogance and the opacity of who uses it can establish as a unique reading mode, managing it as the truth”. Umberto Galimberti, Idee: Il catalogo e questo, Feltrinelli, Milano, 2001, P. 215

Paul Auster, Winter Journal, Einaudi, Torino, 2012, p. 4

“il difficile nella riflessione sull'abitare e che da una parte deve essere riconosciuto cio che e remoto - forse eterno - l'immagine del soggiorno dell'uomo nel grembo materno, e che dall'altra parte, malgrado questo motivo protostorico, nell'abitare deve essere compresa, nella sua forma pm estrema, una condizione di esistenza del XIX secolo. La forma originaria di ogni abitare e il vivere non in una casa ma in un guscio. Questo reca l'impronta del suo abitatore”.W. Benjamin, Parigi capitale del XIX secolo, I.4,4

Umberto Galimberti, Idee: il catalogo e questo, Op. cit. P.122

Emanuele Coccia, Filosofia della casa, Einaudi, Torino, 2021, p. 15

Ibidem, p. 6

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