Eileen Gray's 1027 resurrected and Gray Matters, documentary

Gray Matters explores the long, fascinating life and complicated career of architect and designer Eileen Gray, whose uncompromising vision defined and defied the practice of modernism in decoration, design and architecture.

Making a reputation with her traditional lacquer work in the first decade of the 20th century, she became a critically acclaimed and sought after designer and decorator in the next before reinventing herself as an architect, a field in which she laboured largely in obscurity.

Apart from the accolades that greeted her first building –persistently and perversely credited to her mentor–her pioneering work was done quietly, privately and to her own specifications. But she lived long enough (98) to be re-discovered and acclaimed. Today, with her work commanding extraordinary prices and attention, her legacy, like its creator, remains elusive, contested and compelling.

The house was based on Gray’s studies of wind and sun, and on its position on a steep slope descending to the sea. Photograph © Manuel Bougot.

Eileen Gray’s work found itself at the heart of modernism - a movement she actually helped to define - and garnered praise from her peers, most notably the French architect Le Corbusier. By 1923, Gray decided to concentrate on architecture, coaxed by the Romanian-born and Paris-based architect and architecture critic, Jean Badovici. In 1924, they worked on the construction of her much acclaimed Roquebrune-Cap-Martin located E1027 house, a masterpiece for which she designed the furnishings, including the famous adjustable circular glass table and Bibendum armchair.

''Gray Matters'' is the narrative of one incredible woman’s journey.

Gray’s legacy spans eight decades of creative output, her achievements in drawing, design, architecture, furniture-making and lacquer, amongst others, representing a veritable tour de force. With that said however, sadly Gray lived many years of her life in seclusion, as she was shamefully forgotten and excluded by the worlds of architecture and design (including Le Corbusier’s repugnant silence about Gray creating E1027, leading to a misattribution of credit for the villa).

It wasn’t until 1968, when her career came to light through an article published in Domus magazine by the renowned architectural historian and critic Joseph Rykwert, that Eileen Gray once again became a prominent figure. In the early 1970s, Gray then went on to work with Zeev Aram, the owner of Aram, a distinguished anchor of the London design scene, to bring a number of her archive designs back into production; in 1973, Aram was granted worldwide rights by Eileen Gray to manufacture and distribute her designs.

This modernist villa on the Côte d’Azur, designed by Irish architect Eileen Gray, has witnessed wartime shootings, murder and vandalism by Le Corbusier. Now, at last, it has been brought back to life.

IMDb: Gray Matters (2014)

Le Corbusier was outraged that a woman could have made such a significant work in a style he considered his own.

Today, Eileen Gray’s star shines brightly. Over this year, first was at 2014 Architecture & Design Film Festival in New York City, with a world premiere of the film Gray Matters on October 2014 and now one week ago on RTÉ One in Ireland.

The documentary was directed by Marco Orsini, this is an exemplary and engaging film about the story of a woman, an oft disregarded design heroine and one of the 20th century’s most prominent and pivotal modernist designers. Gray Matters strives to uncover and explain the enigma surrounding Eileen Gray, charting much of her artistic life journey - from ''early triumphs'' through to ''middle-aged obscurity'' and her ''re-discovery and acclaim''.

The film talks with those who knew her personally (including Joseph Rykwert and Zeev Aram) and those who have dedicated themselves to understanding her life’s work. Gray’s architectural triumph, the now restored E1027 villa, also plays a central role in the film. Gray Matters documents the journey of a private and complex woman and the aesthetic drama that marked much of her life. An icon. An innovator. An initiator. Eileen Gray’s story is one that truly does matter.

Gray Matters is narrated by director Mary McGuckian, whose forthcoming film, The Price of Desire (stars Orla Brady, Vincent Perez, Francesco Scianna and Alanis Morissette), charts Gray’s conflicted relationships with Jean Badovici and Le Corbusier relative to her masterpiece, the Villa E1027.

E1027, in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, France, completed in 1929. Photograph © Manuel Bougot.

A view of the living room with furniture and rugs designed by Gray, and, on the far wall, a mural by Le Corbusier. Photograph @ Manuel Bougot.

The main bedroom. Photograph © Tim Benton.

The alcove in the living room with headboard, pillow cupboard and book tray, restored to their original condition, and the Marine rug design by Gray

A portrait of Eileen Gray in Paris, 1926. Photograph © Berenice Abbott.

A mural by Le Corbusier in the guest bedroom. Photograph © Manuel Bougot.

E1027 is now open to the public. Photograph © Tim Benton.

Le Corbusier at work on one of his murals for the villa in the mid-1920s. Photograph: Unknown

View more images

Metalocus recommends

Almazara Acesur by Mollinedo Arquitectura. Photograph by Jesús Granada

An integrated and humanized landscape. Almazara Acesur by Mollinedo Arquitectura

Gimnasio de escalada Spluga por Enrico Scaramellini. Fotografía por Marcello Mariana

Prepare to climb. Spluga climbing gym by Enrico Scaramellini

KOI Building by Ortiz Leon Arquitectos. Photograph by David Frutos

A wavy glass skin. KOI Building by Ortiz Leon Arquitectos

More information

Eileen Gray

Eileen Gray (1878-1976) is an architect and furniture designer born in Ireland. She is considered one of the most influential women of the 20s in those fields.

In 1901 she enrolled in drawing at the Slade School of Fine Arts in London, and during his visits to the Victoria and Alberto Museum he developed her admiration for the Asian works of lacquer and in 1902 she settled temporarily in Paris to continue her studies in drawing at the École Colarossi. Gray settled permanently in Paris in 1906. She practiced little as an architect due to the restrictions that women had at that time in the architecture profession. Among his scarce projects are Villa E-1027 and Villa Tempe á Pailla, on the Costa Azul.

She obtained more fame as an interior designer and furniture designer. Although after the Second World War was losing this reputation little by little. Only in her last years of life did she return to that fame when the designer Zeev Aram took control of the rights of her work and rediscovered it to the world.

Charles Édouard Jeanneret. LE CORBUSIER

Charles Édouard Jeanneret-Gris was born in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland on October 6th, 1887. He is best known as Le Corbusier, one of the most important architects of the XX Century that together with Walter Gropius, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and Frank Lloyd Wright rise up as the fathers of Modern Architecture. In his long career, he worked in France, Germany, Switzerland, the United States, Argentina, India and Japan.

Jeanneret was admitted to the Art School of La Chaux-de-Fonds in 1902. He knew Charles l’Éplattenier, his first teacher, and he became interested in architecture. He built his first house, Villa Fallet, in 1906, and one year later he set out on his first great journey to Italy. From 1908-1909 he worked in Perret Bother’s Studio, where he focussed on the employment of the concrete, and from 1910-1911 he coincided with Mies van der Rohe in this studio in Berlin.

In 1917, Charles Édouard Jeanneret set up finally in Paris. The next year he met the painter Amedée Ozenfant and he displayed his first paintings and wrote his first book, Après le Cubismo. In 1919 he founded the magazine l´Esprit nouveau, where he published unnumbered articles, signing with the pseudonym Le Corbusier for the first time.

He opened his own Studio in 1922, in the number 35 of the rue de Sèvres. In this decade when his laboratory epoch started he carried out a great number of activities as a painter, essayist, and writer. But also as an architect, he planned some of the most recognizable icons of modern architecture and developed the principles of the free plan. Some of these works are the Villa Roche-Jeanneret, the Villa Savoye in Poissy, and the Siedlungweissenhof’s houses built in Stuttgart in 1927. It should be pointed out that at the same time; he set out the “five points” of the architecture.

Le Corbusier projected “The contemporary three million population city” in 1922 and in 1925 put forward the Voisin plan of Paris, which is one of his most important urban proposals. Three years later, in 1928, through his initiative, the CIAM was created and in 1929 he published his first edition of the Oeuvre Complète.

In the 30s, he collaborated with the magazine Plans and Prélude, where he became enthusiastic about urbanism and he started, in 1930, to elaborate the drawings of the “Radiant City” as a result of the “Green City” planned for Moscu, his project would be summarized in the “Radiant Villa”, which was enclosed with the projects for Amberes, Stockholm, and Paris. By 1931 he presented Argel, a proposal that composed the Obus Plan. And in 1933 the 4th CIAM passed and there he edited the Athens Document.

Le Corbusier, in 1943, developed the “Three Human Establishments Doctrine” and founded the Constructors Assembly for Architectural Renovation (ASCORAL). He made the project the Unite d´habitation of Marsella in 1952, which was the first one of a series of similar buildings. At the same time, the works of Chandigarh in India began, where he planned the main governmental buildings. Nevertheless, in the same decade, he worked in France too, in the Notre-Dame-du-Haut chapel in Ronchamp, in the convent of La Tourette in Éveux, Jaoul’s houses in Neuilly and the Unites d´habitation of Rézé-lès-Nantes, Briey-en-Forêt and Firminy.

He wrote and published his worldwide known study of the Modulor in 1948 followed by a second part in 1953. Meanwhile the next Le Corbusier’s books had a more autobiographic nature, among them the Le poème de l'angle droit (1955), l'Atelier de la recherche patiente (1960) and Mise aupoint (1966) stand out.

Le Corbusier, at the end of his life, created many projects that would not be built, for example, a calculus center for Olivetti in Rho, Milan; a congress in Strasbourg, the France embassy in Brasilia and a new hospital in Venice.

He died drowned on the 27th of August of 1965 in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin.