Villa Savoye Wasn't a Trendsetter, but Its Unusual Design Can Still Spur a Revelation

Among architects, the Villa Savoye is one of the most famous houses in the world, an icon known to anyone who ever sat through lectures on modernism.

Designed by the Swiss-born Le Corbusier in 1928, the house is in the Paris suburb of Poissy. Last month, I finally saw it, and it was a revelation. As a student I had studied the floor plans and photographs, but there's no substitute for seeing the real thing.

What makes this house so special? It is provocative.

The Villa Savoye, best described as a box on stilts, is unlike any house I have ever seen. Its unusual plan and circulation flow force a visitor to rethink the very idea of "house." For example, should a house have an obvious front and back? In this case, all four sides are the same.

Though the Villa Savoye never became a trendsetter, some features are definitely part of the architectural mainstream. Indeed, the basic elements in many new houses today -- large windows that fill a space with light, big multipurpose rooms, open floor plans with only a few strategically placed walls and sliding glass doors with large areas of glass that make adjacent decks or patios appear to be part of the room -- can be traced back to this house.

The last of a series of villas that Le Corbusier designed during the 1920s, the Villa Savoye embodied many of his theories that had turned the architecture world of that time on its ear. As painters and sculptors were turning from representational art to complete abstraction (from, say, recognizable landscapes to canvases with greens, browns and blues that hinted at vegetation), avant-garde architects, led by Le Corbusier, were designing buildings that were pared down to their essences. Rooms became "volumes that were defined by light." Both exteriors and interiors were stark and spare. Abandoning the elaborate ornamentation that had characterized Western architecture since the beginning of the Renaissance, Le Corbusier sheathed his exteriors with plain white stucco.

Le Corbusier declared that houses for the industrialized era not only should look different, but also should be built differently, taking advantage of new technologies. To lower costs, he favored mass production of components such as windows and doors in factories over building-site fabrication by individual craftsmen.

He favored a structural framework made of reinforced concrete instead of the traditional masonry and wood, a switch that also opened up new design possibilities. Roofs could be flat, and both roofs and floors could be supported by concrete beams and columns instead of walls. Thus "liberated," the walls could be placed anywhere that function or whimsy dictated. No longer structural, the exterior walls functioned merely as "curtains" of enclosure. Windows could be as big and extensive as the designer wanted.

At the same time Le Corbusier was formulating theories and exploring new materials, he was also confronting lifestyle changes that still bedevil architects today. When you approach your house in a car, where do you put the entry and where do you stow the car? His solution at Villa Savoye is ingenious, though possible only with a wealthy client.

In effect, Le Corbusier designed the house to fit the car, in this case a chauffeur-driven limousine. At ground level, the structure's footprint is a U-shaped driveway -- the exact turning radius of a 1929 Voisin -- overlaid with a column grid. Wedged between the legs of the U is the "service area," which included two maids' rooms, a chauffeur's apartment, and a three-car garage. The owners' living quarters are on the second floor, which is raised on "pilotis" -- Le Corbusier's term for supporting columns.

To reach the front door, the owners' chauffeur drove under the house. As he began to turn, following the driveway, the solid wall of the service core gave way to the curved glass wall of the entry foyer, which echoes the movement of the car (a neat trick). The chauffeur stopped at the front door (which is actually at the back of the house), where the owners alighted and entered their light-filled lobby. The driver, continuing around the curve, either pulled into the garage or drove straight ahead and exited.

Inside the house, the prosaic has been turned into art. The huge light-filled lobby (about 630 square feet) is dominated by a circular "scissor-stair." A fairly common type of staircase -- it has a landing halfway up so that in profile the staircase looks like an open pair of scissors -- has been transformed into a sinuous, twisting white sculpture that continues upward through the house. Beckoning straight ahead is an alternate route to the living quarters above, a light-filled ramp.