When Le Corbusier painted Eileen Gray's E-1027
Eileen Gray designed a modernist villa on the French Riviera. Every detail was considered. Then, Le Corbusier painted eight murals directly onto the house's white walls. He did not ask permission.
When Le Corbusier painted Eileen Gray's E-1027
The house
Gray completed E-1027 in 1929, designed for her partner Jean Badovici. The name was a code: E for Eileen, 10 for J (Jean), 2 for B (Badovici), 7 for G (Gray). She conceived it as a total work, not just the structure, but every element of how one would live within it.
The house represented a particular approach to modernism. Where Le Corbusier's famous dictum proclaimed "the house is a machine for living," Gray's architecture emphasized adaptability. Her furniture was designed to move and transform. Spaces could be reconfigured according to changing needs. The approach was equally modern but reflected different priorities about how people actually inhabit buildings.
Gray had no formal architectural training. She came to architecture through furniture design and lacquer work, a path that perhaps freed her from certain orthodoxies that constrained her formally educated contemporaries.
The intervention
In 1938, Le Corbusier began painting murals on E-1027's interior walls. He added more in 1939, eventually creating eight murals throughout the house. He later described this as an artistic contribution, an enhancement of the space.
Yet that same year, 1938, Le Corbusier had written to Gray after spending several days in E-1027 with Badovici: "I am so happy to tell you how much those few days spent in your house have made me appreciate the rare spirit which has dictated all the dispositions, inside and outside, and given to the modern furniture, the equipment, such dignified form, so charming, so full of spirit."
Gray had designed those white surfaces deliberately. They were part of a sophisticated spatial strategy, surfaces that reflected Mediterranean light, that created specific relationships between interior and exterior, that allowed her furniture and architectural details to read clearly.
The murals fundamentally altered these relationships. They imposed a different aesthetic logic onto spaces that had been carefully calibrated according to other principles. And Le Corbusier understood exactly what he was doing. Six years earlier, in a 1932 letter to Vladimir Nekrassov, he had written explicitly about the mural's role in architecture: "I admit the mural not to enhance a wall, but on the contrary, as a means to violently destroy the wall, to remove from it all sense of stability, of weight."
The contradiction is stark, praising Gray's "rare spirit" while simultaneously deploying murals as weapons to "violently destroy" the very walls she had so carefully conceived.
The attribution problem
For decades, E-1027 was frequently attributed to Badovici, Gray's male partner, or discussed primarily in relation to Le Corbusier's murals. Gray's authorship was often minimized or questioned.
This was not unique to E-1027. Throughout the early 20th century, women architects routinely saw their work attributed to male collaborators or dismissed entirely. Gray was one of perhaps a handful of women practicing architecture at that level in the 1920s and 1930s. The professional structures of the time made independent recognition extremely difficult.
In 1952, Gray addressed the murals in a letter to Badovici, making clear her opposition to the unauthorized interventions.
The physical proximity
In 1952, Le Corbusier built his own structure—a small cabin called the Cabanon—adjacent to E-1027. He spent subsequent summers there, swimming in the cove below Gray's house. In 1965, he drowned in those waters.
The proximity of these two structures creates an unusual architectural situation. They represent fundamentally different approaches to modernism, built by architects with very different philosophies, existing side by side on the same dramatic coastline.
The recognition gap
While Le Corbusier's influence on 20th-century architecture is well documented, Gray's contributions were overlooked for decades. Her furniture was collected and admired, pieces like the Bibendum chair and the E-1027 table became icons, but her architectural work received far less attention.
This began to shift in the late 20th century as architectural historians started systematically reassessing the contributions of women architects who had been written out of modernist narratives. Gray's work at E-1027 revealed a sophisticated understanding of how architecture could be both rigorously modern and attentive to human complexity.
The restoration
The restoration of E-1027, completed in 2021, provided an opportunity to experience Gray's original design intentions. The project faced an interesting question: what to do with Le Corbusier's murals?
The decision was to preserve them, but explicitly contextualize them as unauthorized interventions. They remain visible as historical documents, evidence of a particular moment in architectural history and the complex dynamics around authorship and attribution.
Two approaches to modernism
The story of E-1027 illuminates the diversity within modernist architecture. Le Corbusier advocated for universal principles, standardization, and geometric clarity. Gray developed an approach equally committed to modern materials and spatial innovation but more focused on flexibility and individual needs.
Neither approach was inherently superior. They represented different values and priorities. But Le Corbusier's vision dominated architectural education and discourse for decades, while Gray's more adaptive modernism was largely forgotten until recent reassessment.
What the archive reveals
E-1027 stands now as evidence of what was possible in modernist architecture when different priorities guided design decisions. Gray's furniture demonstrates how objects could be both beautiful and functionally transformable. Her spatial planning shows how modern architecture could create rooms that adapted to life rather than prescribing how life should be lived.
The house also stands as evidence of how easily women's architectural contributions could be overshadowed, misattributed, or physically altered by male contemporaries who felt entitled to intervene.
The murals remain on the walls, not as improvements, but as documentation of what happened. Visitors can now see both Gray's sophisticated original vision and the history of its appropriation, understanding both as part of the complex story of architectural modernism.
