Tag: Tucked away

A PLACE OF GREATER COMFORT

Tucked Away at the end of a narrow alley, an enchanting property sits peacefully surrounded by a courtyard and a garden. Of roses, lilac and wisteria. The setting is rather pastoral, yet unprepossessing. This is the first impression of the place. We could drop only one of the powerful words of the famous poem of. Charles Baudelaire, “Invitation to Voyage”, to associate it with these surroundings. Order, beauty, (luxe), peace and voluptuousness.

It is here that Ary Scheffer, the Dutch-born painter moved with his family in 1830. Under the Empire, this neighborhood. Had still been on the city’s fringe. In a few years, it was undergoing a property boom. Artists, painters and musicians. Tucked away Were charmed by the area. And so were young women of loose morals. Delacroix, who was ensconced at 58, rue. Notre Dame de Lorette wrote to George Sand: “this new neighborhood makes any young. Man as ardent as myself giddy”.

For 30 years, this property was one of the intellectual and artistic epicenters of Parisian life. Delacroix, Liszt, Rossini, George Sand. Were among its frequent visitors. An atelier was built across the courtyard, where Ary and his brother Hendrik, also a. Painter, attended to the prevailing pictorial tastes under the auspices of the Orleans royal household. After passing into the hands of his only daughter. Cornelia, who preserved the spirit of the reputed salon, it continued for another generation in the family until it was sold to the French State in 1956.

Today, the Musée de la Vie Romantique is a living. Fragment of a feverish period of the artistic life of the Parisian elites in the first half of the nineteenth-century. And above all it is, in a. Voracious city, a place of rare and elusive charm, a sanctuary where time belongs to another dimension.

A PLACE OF GREATER COMFORT

Tucked Away at the end of a narrow alley, an enchanting property sits peacefully surrounded by a courtyard and a garden of roses. Lilac and wisteria. The setting is rather pastoral, yet unprepossessing. This is the first impression of the place. We could drop only one of the powerful words of the famous poem of. Charles Baudelaire, “Invitation to Voyage”, to associate it with these surroundings. Order, beauty, (luxe), peace and voluptuousness.

It is here that Ary Scheffer, the Dutch-born painter. Moved with his family in 1830. Under the Empire, this neighborhood had still been on the city’s fringe. In a few years, it was undergoing a property boom. Tucked Artists, painters and. Musicians were charmed by the area. And so were young women of loose morals. Delacroix, who was ensconced at 58, rue Notre Dame de. Lorette wrote to George Sand: “this new neighborhood makes any young man as ardent as myself giddy”.

For 30 years, this property was one of the intellectual and artistic epicenters of Parisian life. Delacroix, Liszt, Rossini. George Sand were among its frequent visitors. An atelier was built across the courtyard, where Ary and his brother. Hendrik, also a painter, attended to the prevailing pictorial tastes under the auspices of the. Orleans royal household. After passing into the hands of his only daughter. Cornelia, who preserved the spirit of the reputed salon, it continued for another generation in the family until it was sold to the French State in 1956.

Today, the Musée de la Vie Romantique is a living fragment of a feverish period of the artistic life of the Parisian elites in the first half of the nineteenth-century. And above all it is, in a voracious city, a place of rare and elusive charm, a sanctuary where time belongs to another dimension.

HOUSING HUMANS

Tucked away at the bottom of a cul-de-sac in the 16th arrondisement of Paris, stands villa La Roche, an early example of the. Private residences designed by Le Corbusier for wealthy patrons. Unlike the floating sensation that. Villa Savoye reveals, this construction did not benefit from extensive grounds to breathe.

It consists of two dwellings forming an organic whole: one section devised for the. Swiss banker and collector, Edouard La. Roche, and a second one for the architect’s brother, Albert Jeanneret. Only the first one can be visited, while the second houses the.Offices of the Le Corbusier Foundation.

The bare and geometrical spaces convey a. Strong belief in architecture as a purified form of expression. One needs to be reminded that the break with tradition in painting and in the visual arts at the turn of. The century took much longer to be manifested in building design. Lines, volumes and planes in all their geometrical simplicity were. Embraced after the fancy expressions of Art Nouveau and Art Deco. Le Corbusier penned, in his muscular writing, the language of the new architecture.

“Architecture is the clever, accurate and magnificent play of. Volumes assembled with light”, he wrote. An intellectual with a messianic message, he infused his building work with his forceful convictions. His urban planning was meant to lead. Directly to human happiness and well-being. Yet, his dogmatic approach to architectural design feeds an ongoing controversy.

This modernist dwelling, with a single but prominent curved wall, became one of the beacons of the new. Form of thinking about housing humans. Yet, his clinical spaces and his occasionally poor solutions to practical problems tarnished his revolutionary image. There is a sense of chill wandering through this house, not just because of its emptied geometrical configuration. It is the. Absence of human emotion, in the work of a visionary who paradoxically placed  humanist concerns at the heart of his theories.