Villa Noailles

The Villa Noailles on the Côte Varoise is a monument historique .. It is also called " Château Saint- Bernard".

Building project and planning

Charles and Marie -Laure de Noailles, wealthy and influential members of the Parisian intellectual scene, commissioned in 1923 the architect Robert Mallet -Stevens ( 1886-1945 ), for whom this was the first major project, with planning their villa in Hyeres. The site was from 1924 to 1929 an experimental field for the architect whose model of the Viennese architect Josef Hoffmann, were the studies of the Dutch artist group De Stijl and the theories of the Bauhaus. Planned " a small house designed so that the sun shines in the morning in the bedroom and in the afternoon in the salon " was initially a winter residence. The couple advanced but during construction the space program and it emerged gradually the swimming pool, the gym, squash room and other attachments.

Distribution

In contrast to the contemporaneous buildings of Le Corbusier, who presented his villas on pillars or columns and sparked the terrain, there is the house construction of Mallet -Stevens of a series of rooms, following their floors to the topography of the slope, there are different levels. The villa itself, a maze- like building complex nested stage whose function is less served the living as the representation. Determined the structure of the " poetry of the right angle ." The added cubic complex building structures similar to the aesthetic of the De Stijl group. The resolution of the space does not correspond to the classical tradition, but follows the spatial conception of Frank Lloyd Wright. The ceiling of the pink salons is formed by an irregular bearing concrete structure on which rests an existing rectangle from different formats of monochrome glass ceiling Barillet. The south facade opens with numerous windows and terraces in front of the bedrooms facing south with views of the bay of Hyères. The client asked, " ... to sacrifice an inch wide window to get an interesting modern facade. The homogeneous facade surfaces without protrusions and cornices are plastered ocher and extend to the attic of flat roofs.

The house as a monument

The villa in Hyeres, leaving their owners, the architecture of the elite Belle Epoque and the rationalist ideas of Le Corbusier and the Bauhaus followed, so wanted to implement with the new ideals of the Modern was left unfinished and, since 1972, no more house. The object is now a cultural monument, where the young artists will be promoted and the venue for example exhibitions to fashion and design ..