How Eileen Gray’s Côte d’Azur hideaway fell into the hands of Le Corbusier

It began with a love affair and a desire for solitude. In 1921, Eileen Gray was a highly sought-after furniture designer in Paris, having conceived of the ‘Dragons’ armchair and the ‘Pirogue’ daybed for the fashion designer Suzanne Talbot. These flawless designs, together with later pieces such as the ‘Bibendum’ armchair, helped to determine what the future would look like: one that accelerated to the pace of a Tatra T87 saloon car and thrummed to the wah-wah of a jazz trumpet.

Into this avant-garde scene came the 28-year-old Jean Badovici, editor of the influential journal L’ Architecture Vivante. Fifteen years Gray’s junior, Badovici moved easily in the world. He was her polar opposite: gregarious where she was earnest, flamboyant where she was restrained. Having recently emerged from a tumultuous relationship with the singer Damia (queen of la chanson réaliste), Gray found this wild-eyed, dark-haired young man a means of escape from herself.

Badovici suggested Gray design a house, something she had aspired to do ever since seeing the architecture of Le Corbusier. In 1926, they found a small rocky outcrop in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin on the Côte d’Azur, between the train tracks and the sea, and set about constructing a ‘little hideaway’, carrying the materials themselves in wheelbarrows.

E.1027 was the result. The name entwined their initials: E for Eileen, 10 for J, the 10th letter of the alphabet (standing for Jean), 2 for B (Badovici) and 7 for G (Gray). The intimate, two-storey property had a long, light-filled reception room, two bedrooms, a tiny kitchen, a bathroom and a room for a maid. It was serene and humanist, with elements of whimsy, such as stencilled phrases to guide you through: ‘enter slowly’, ‘no laughing matter’. It encapsulated modernism’s faith in the human race’s ability to improve both itself and its surroundings.

Eileen spent two summers at E.1027, until Badovici’s drinking and womanising drove her away. Her absence was filled by Badovici’s friend Le Corbusier, the celebrated Swiss architect with a huge but brittle ego. His initial admiration of Gray’s achievement soon gave way to obsession. The building, modest in scale, beautifully proportioned and eloquently executed, had taken Le Corbusier’s ideas and surpassed them.

Privately, he sought to assert control over the house. In a supreme act of arrogance, and with Badovici’s blessing, he painted a series of bold, Picasso-inspired murals on its walls.

Gray was unequivocal in her response: she described the act as ‘a rape’. She asked him to remove the murals, but he refused. For the rest of his life, Le Corbusier protected his intervention, even building a tiny cabin above E.1027 to ensure it remained under his control. He died in 1965, while out swimming in the sea below.

After his death, the house fell into neglect, its significance obscured by the man who had come to dominate it. In 2000, with the revival of Gray’s reputation, a committee was established to save the house; and after a lengthy restoration project, it is now open to the public.

This story is retold in Beatrice Minger’s film E.1027: Eileen Gray and the House by the Sea. Here, we talk to Minger about the making of the film, modernism’s afterlife, and why Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own might have provided Gray with her inspiration.

This is such a compelling story. When did you first come across it?

In reality, the story found me. I was in discussions about doing a film on Le Corbusier when I came across E.1027. I was immediately fascinated by the question of female space — and what happens when a female artist is pushed out of that space, which is what happened to Eileen.

E.1027 was built between 1926 and 1929. A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf was published in 1929. Do you think there are any crossovers?

Yes, and it’s very conceivable that Eileen met Virginia Woolf. She studied at the Slade School of Art in London between 1900 and 1902 with Wyndham Lewis, who was associated with the Bloomsbury Group. Someone told me that members of the group used to holiday on the Côte d’Azur. It’s possible they even directed her to the place where she built E.1027. It was also a time when non-heterosexual women were thinking deeply about how to carve out private spaces where they could express themselves. It shows how much these ideas were circulating among artists and writers at the time.

Eileen Gray almost sounds too extraordinary to be real — an independent, bisexual woman running her own design business in Paris and socialising with figures like Picasso and Aleister Crowley. Did you find her difficult to cast?

I was looking for an actor who could embody her soul. I wanted someone from Ireland who could speak French, and there aren’t many actors like that. I met four women of very different ages, and with Natalie Radmall-Quirke I immediately felt she had Eileen’s interiority — that she carried a secret. When we cut her hair, everyone said, ‘Wow — there she is.’

The film feels like it is in two parts: first, the creation of the house with Jean; then the darker period when Le Corbusier arrives.

I didn’t think of it that way. What I wanted was to create a highly sensitive world where you’re connected — almost in a tactile way — to Eileen’s universe: this beautiful, private space that represents a tender friendship between Eileen and Jean. Everything feels intimate and delicate, and then suddenly there’s an invader, the temperature drops. I wanted the viewer to experience that physically, because that’s often what women experience — a man entering your space, taking up all the room, not respecting it, and then claiming it as his own.

Why did you use a stage set in the film?

There were many practical reasons. Today E.1027 is a museum, and it’s very small. The stage set allowed us to expand what we could do, and to ask questions about space — interiority and exteriority. Gray asked her niece, the painter Prunella Clough, to burn all her letters, so we have very little evidence of her inner life. We needed a way to say: there’s an emptiness here, we don’t know everything about her or how she felt at the time. It’s up to you to decide.

After Eileen left E.1027, she built another house, Tempe à Pailla in Menton. Were you tempted to film there as well?

Very much so. She said that Tempe à Pailla was the more sophisticated and intimate space of the two. Unfortunately, at the time of filming it was in poor condition. Several design historians had asked to visit, but no one had been allowed inside. Since then, the house has been sold, and I’ve heard it is being renovated — so perhaps the new owners will be more receptive to visitors.

In the film, Eileen receives a postcard from Le Corbusier expressing admiration for the house, yet she’s very reticent about meeting him. Why do you think that was?

We believe they only met a few times — it was a relationship at a distance. They admired each other, though Le Corbusier often had difficult relationships with female artists. Eileen was extremely private. She didn’t attend salons, or even her own openings. I think she was reluctant to expose herself to others’ opinions. It was intimidating to be a woman in such a male-dominated world. When she was in love with Damia — who was outgoing, social, always at parties — it simply wasn’t her world. That’s why it didn’t last.

The murals feel like a visual manifestation of how women have been erased from art history.

Exactly. Today we see it as invasion and appropriation, but at the time it was considered normal. It’s a patriarchal and a colonial mindset: ‘I like this — now it’s mine.’ He simply took ownership of the house and allowed people to think he had built it.

When the house came up for sale in 1956, after Badovici died, why didn’t Le Corbusier buy it himself?

As far as I know, he did not have the money. Apparently, he wrote many letters and finally persuaded a Swiss collector, Marie-Louise Schelbert, to buy it, and then he got a local businessman to buy the land behind it. He struck a deal to design a restaurant for him, and in return the owner would give him a small plot of land where he could build his cabanon. It overlooked E.1027, so he could see it every morning, and in the end, he died in front of it.

Was it obsession, or jealousy?

Both. At first he was intrigued, then alienated by an atmosphere he couldn’t replicate. He couldn’t understand what made it so serene and beautiful. There was an innocence to it. Very quickly, admiration turned into a need to possess — and in the process, to destroy.

What’s tragic is that Eileen made the house as an invitation, a generous and intimate experience for anyone who entered. He violated that.

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