On 27 August, 1965, architectural legend Le Corbusier went for a swim. He never came back. His death by drowning off the beach at Roquebrune-Cap-Martin on France’s Côte d’Azur, just below E-1027 – the iconic modernist villa designed and built by Eileen Gray in the late 1920s – was, of course, an accident. Yet, some might call it divine retribution. Or, at the very least, ironic. For Corb, perhaps threatened, as has been suggested by a number of commentators, by the ability of a woman to produce such a fine example of architectural modernism, had taken up intermittent residence at the villa in an attempt to make it his own and, in doing so, displace the profile of its creator. First, while sojourning there in the 1930s, he adorned (or defaced – you decide) its pristine interior walls with his decorative, painted murals, and later, having failed in his attempt to purchase the property (think hostile takeover bid), he decided to build his Cabanon des vacances right next to the villa.
from New stories by Architonic http://ift.tt/2bKa4Zt
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