E.1027 – Eileen Gray and the House by the Sea

She built a house for herself. Unfortunately it turned out to be a masterpiece.

Irish designer Eileen Gray builds a refuge on the Côte d‘Azur in 1929. Her first house is a discrete, avant-garde masterpiece. She names it E.1027, a cryptic marriage of her initials and those of Jean Badovici, with whom she built it. Le Corbusier, upon discovering the house, becomes intrigued, obsessed. He later covers the walls with murals and publishes photos of them. Gray describes these paintings as vandalism and demands restitution. He ignores her wishes and instead builds his famous Cabanon directly behind E.1027, which dominates the narrative of the site to this day. 

A story about the power of female expression, and men’s desire to control it.