Étienne-Louis Boullée - Sliding Doors

Cénotaphe à Newton (1784, sphere of 150 m or 500 ft in diameter)

I was doing some serious time-travelling this morning, way way back into distant antiquity: my first degree in fine art.

I was browsing one of my trusty but now metaphorically yellowing course books for a unit I took on C20 architecture, naturally from the aesthetic rather than engineering perspective. As Isipped my coffee (I wonder why 'sipping' seems such a tea thing?), I was flicking through the tome in question, my Charles Jencks's 'Modern Movements in Architecture', and was put in mind of megalomaniac and a visionary C18 architect Étienne-Louis Boullée (1728-1799).

Boullée's abstract geometric style, inspired by C17 and C18 French Classical architecture, took geometric forms to a giagantic and simplified scale. His proposed works that were devoid of ornament and used light and shadow and a sense of movement in highly innovative ways.

Cénotaphe à Newton: Interior

'Newton's cenotaph was designed to isolate, to reinvent, the huge movement of time and celestial phenomena. Inside, the viewer is isolated too, on a small viewing platform. Along the top half of the sphere's edges, apertures in the stone allow light in, in pins, creating starlight when there is daylight. During the night a huge and otherworldly light hangs, flooding the sphere, as sunlight. During the day, the "night effect." During the night, day.'

Entree du cimmetiere (c1780-90)

The French architect was interested in making architecture expressive of purpose, an approach his detractors termed 'architecture parlante' ('talking architecture').

Interior space is opened up to flow from one functional area to another rather than such areas being closed off in descrete separate 'rooms'.

By now you can see where this is heading!

Cénotaphe de Turenne

Cénotaphe égyptien (c1786)

Of course Boullée's work was re-discovered in the late C19 and early C20, influencing architecture, even as recently as that of Aldo Rossi (1931-1997) ...


... in his Bonnefanten Museum in Maastricht ...

Bonnefanten Museum in Maastricht

You'll also know Rossi from his designs for Alessi ...

'La Cupola' Espresso Maker

'Il conico', 1986

'La conica', 1982

However, apart from a number of private houses designed beween 1762 and 1778, none of Boullée's large scale works were ever built, though his designs in engravings were circulated widely in professional circles.

I can't help having a sliding doors moment, wondering about the course of C19 architeture had it moved forward on Boullée's ideas and not taken to its various backward-looking Gothic/Rennaissance/electic diversions.

PS: Boullée recently-ish popped up unexpectedly at the movies. In Peter Greenaway's film 'The Belly of an Architect' (1987), whose main character, Stourley Krackite, is obsessed with celebrating the C18 French architect's work.

Thomas Edison - The Universal Exposition, Paris 1900

Paris - Highlighting the Pavilions and Sites of the Universal Exposition of 1900

Rummaging round my computer I found I had quite a lot more Thomas Edison footage of Paris in 1900 at the time of the Universal Exposition ...


So I thought I indulge myself - and try your patience - and put together another small video of some of the various bits I have.

Each of the titled photos below is for a section of the film ...

Eiffel Tower from the Trocadero Palace

La Place de l'Opera

L'Esplanade des Invalides

Les Champs de Mars and the Eiffel Tower 1

Les Champs de Mars and the Eiffel Tower 2

Dancing in Les Champs de Mars

Ascending the Eiffel Tower

So - again - sit back ... you know the drill by now!

Okay?

May Gibbs - Visiting 'Nutcote' and Finding Banksia Men

'Nutcote' (1925) in Neutral Bay, Sydney

I did a post on 20 February 2007 - 'May Gibbs (1877-1969) - Darker and Lighter Visions'. Looking principally at her books for children.

May Gibbs at her desk at 'Nutcote' - Creating the cartoons and text for children's books

Today I visited 'Nutcote' - the home she and her husband had built in 1925 in somewhat of a collaboration with famed architect B. J. Waterhouse.

View from 'Nutcote' towards Sydney Harbour

Another View from 'Nutcote' towards Sydney Harbour

I'd expected to see and enjoy more of her artistic and literary work - and there were plenty of lovely things there in this direction.

But what really blew me away were the interiors of the house. All rooms on a small and perfect human scale, flowing one into another through double doors, with only a small space-wasting entrance hall. Solid dark wood everywhere - doors, built-in book shelves, mantle pieces - but freshened up with cream walls, and by light flooding in through ubiquitous big windows. Every room having extraordinary views of the harbour, views almost in scale with the rooms!

May Gibb's work area, with her original desk and drafting stand

The Dining Room, with Servery into the Kitchen

Wish I'd taken more sneak photos - especially of the two cosy and perfect little bedrooms. I just wanted to crawl into bed and snooze for a bit. Or forever. Cos I attempted to do a deal with one of the volunteer guides - I'd be allowed to take over the house (by force if necessary) on the understanding that it would then be divided in two - half for her half for me. She seemed to consider the idea for an unnaturally long time, given her age and seeming respectability.

After her final and crushing retreat from our takeover bid, I slinked off to the garden in search of the totally scary banksia men from May Gibbs' books ...


.. and there they were ...



... with my own ...


... just too tempting not to pillage in an act of tourist vandalism!

New Pyramid Discovered in Egypt at Saqqara

First time I went to Egypt, I followed the great army of tourists to Giza and its world famous pyramids ...

... but then at dusk as a trickle of one I climbed Mycerinas or Menkaure, the smallest of the three great structures ... and took a (sadly double-exposed) photo from the top to document and prove my 'feat' (aka my crime) ...

So, being a seriously pyramid-focussed person, my attention was captured by the discovery earlier this month of a new pyramid (the 118th) in Egypt - this time at Saqqara and not far from the Step Pyramid of Djoser ...

With a square base of a little over 72 feet each side, the 4500 years old building newly excavated from the sand is believed to be the tomb of Queen Seshseshet, the mother of the sixth dynasty Old Kingdom Pharoah Teti 1.

There are plans to enter the structure shortly to search for inscriptions/whatever that will definitively identify the person for whom it was built.

I'll keep you posted - though I suspect this is not a Tutankhamun situation, as it appears to have been broken into in ancient times!

Eileen Gray (1878-1976) - A Forgotten Irish Designer and Architect in Paris

Eileen Gray 1926 by Berenice Abbott

Eileen Gray in her rue de Bonaparte apartment with a Block Screen, 1970

Eileen Gray is the great forgotten C20 designer and architect. Perhaps partly due to being a woman, an expatriate Irish in a non-Anglo environment and an untrained but gifted amateur dilettante. Best known (if at all) for her work in the Art Deco style, she continually embraced new styles and materials throughout her long life, never clinging to past success.

Eileen Gray studied painting at the Slade School in London, and, after her father's death in 1900, moved to Paris, continuing her study at the Académie Julian and the École Colarossi. But it was when back in London in 1905 for her mother's illness that Eileen found Mr Charles' lacquer repair shop in Dean Street in Soho, and learned the art of lacquering screens. Study furthered back in Paris with Sugiwara from 1906-10.

Sugiwara in his rue Guénégaud atelier

Eileen showed some decorative panels at the Salon des Artistes Décorateurs in 1913, and established her own design business in 1922 at 217 rue du Faubourg-St-Honore, the Galerie Jean Désert. With its mythical director, Jean Desert!

Invitation to Galerie Jean Désert, 1920s

Her interior design involved among other things furniture and interior fittings ...

Armchair Bibendum , 1925

Daybed was originally designed in 1925 for Madame Talbot's�

Menton Table, 1932

Screen 1922 Lacquered wood and metal rods

Coffee Table 1927

Lamp

Satellite Mirror

... and rugs.

Castellar Rug 1925-35

Bonaparte Rug 1925-35

Kilkenny Rug 1925-35

Roquebrune Rug 1925-35

Wendingen Rug 1926-29

Rug for Eileen Gray's House E-1027, 1926-29

Eileen Gray also planned integrated designs, such as the refurbishing of the rue de Lota apartment of Madame Levy in 1920.

Rue de Lota apartment designed by Eileen Gray with her Pirogue sofa


The rue de Lota apartment designed by Eileen Gray with her Bibendum Chair, Serpent Chair and Block Screen visible in the doorway

She then naturally ventured into a parallel career in architecture under the encouragement of her friend and lover, architecture critic Jean Badovici, with later support of the French architect Le Corbusier.

With Badovici, she began her first home, E-1027 (1927-29), at Cap Martin (Alpes-Maritimes), France ...

E-1027, Roquebrune, near Menton


Living room at E-1027 2

The guest bedroom at E-1027 with the E-1027 Table designed by Eileen Gray

... which she followed with Tempe A Pailla (1932-34) 187 rue Castelland, Castellar, (Alpes-Maritimes), France.

Tempe A Pailla, 1932-34

The terrace at Tempe A Pailla with a folding S chair, 1932-34

Eileen Gray then branched out into other (mostly unrealized) projects.





What I particularly love about this modernist architecture of the 20's and 30's is the open planning - such that space flows through the house, rather than being static and boxed up in square rooms, where doors shut to further close the movement off.

It was only in 1968 that Eileen Gray's work began to be appreciated - through an article by Joseph Rykwert in 'Domus' magazine. An appreciation boosted in 1972 by the unexpectedly high values reached by her furniture and fittings in the auction of the contents of Jean Doucet's apartment.

This led to the reproduction of many of her designs by the London company, Aram. A MoMA exhibition in New York in 1980. And a film 'Eileen Gray - Invitation to a Voyage' (2006), directed by Jorge Bundschuh. Her place in design and architecture is now secure.

From this post you would imagine Eileen Gray was a self-possessed and forceful personality. In fact, she was quiet, shy and nervous ...


... writing in old age:

'I have instinctive fears, fears of ghosts, of people. I have tried in vain to conquer them'

I love when people so magnificently overcome their (perhaps self-perceived) limitations!