July 5 1932 must have been a happy day for Paul Cavrois, a
wealthy textiles manufacturer whose family-owned spinning mills and a dyeing factory in
Roubaix, northern France. As well as celebrating the wedding of his daughter,
Geneviève, this was the moment he unveiled the grand modernist house he had
commissioned three years earlier from the avant-garde French architect Robert
Mallet-Stevens.
“Air, light, work, sports, hygiene, comfort and efficiency” :
that was the brief. Set in the leafy Roubaix suburb of Croix, 8 km northeast of
Lille, Villa Cavrois was a minimalist château that heralded a new style of
luxury living, one free of superfluous adornment and with built-in clocks,
telephones and wirelesses — and fewer staff. Its five-hectare grounds featured
a circular driveway and a 72 m-long reflecting pool. There was a 27 m swimming
pool with a two-tier diving board, along with immense windows and a roof
terrace with a pergola of concrete beams.
A champion of the modern, Mallet-Stevens was born in 1886, a
year before Le Corbusier. His surviving works include Villa Noailles in
Hyères, Provence, five
houses in the Rue Mallet-Stevens in Paris and a casino in
St-Jean-de-Luz, Aquitaine. Villa Cavrois is arguably his greatest project,
where he designed everything from the clinic-like kitchens to the angular
bedroom furniture, with a little help from the hot talent of the day. Jean Prouvé
did the lift and the sculptors Jan and Joël Martel created a haut-relief for
the walls.
The neighbours didn’t approve, of course. Paul-Hervé
Parsy, who knew Villa Cavrois as a child and is now its administrator, recalls how this monumental,
liner-like edifice was dubbed the “yellow peril” on account of the thousands of
sand-coloured bricks that decorate its 60 m façade. But for a brief interlude,
life here must have been golden for M. and Mme Cavrois and their seven
children. Amenities included separate dining rooms for parents and children, a
huge games room with a stage, and a smoking room that has a surprisingly small
window.
Then came the second world war. The Cavrois’ dream home became
a German barracks, with an anti-aircraft gun set up on its manicured lawns.
Modifications followed in the 1950s, and after the death of Mme Cavrois in
1985, the furniture was auctioned off and the building sold to a property
developer. Demolition seemed inevitable but a pressure group, which won support
from the likes of architects Renzo Piano, Norman Foster and Richard Rogers,
mounted a campaign to preserve what is now considered a masterpiece of
modernist architecture. Listed as a historic monument in 1990, it remained
neglected and vandalised until 2001, when it was finally bought by the French
state.
Next month, following a 12-year, € 23 m restoration by the
Centre des Monuments Nationaux, Villa Cavrois will open its doors to the
public. In many ways, this rebirth is as fascinating as the building itself.
More than 200 skilled workers were drafted in to restore the mahogany parquet
and frosted glass, and paint the drawing room pistachio-green. The boys’
bedroom has deliberately been left untouched, with peeling paint and bare
bricks. Visitors will be able to wander freely around the building’s four
levels, with black-and-white photos showing how the original interiors looked
and a tablet computer for hire offering background information.
There is plenty to swoon over, from gorgeous chrome radiator
screens and geometrically patterned clocks to an enormous white marble bathroom
rich with 1930s flourishes. Mallet- Stevens’ design choices are engrossing —
pearwood and pigskin for the study, sycamore and polished aluminium in the
boudoir. But for Parsy, who has written a visitors’ guide to the property,
there is no single standout feature. “His genius lies in the sense of
gesamtkunstwerk,” he explains, “in the feeling that this is a total work of
art.”
This is perhaps best appreciated from the far end of the
reflecting pool, where one can contemplate Villa Cavrois’ many rapports and
resonances. The organising principles are similar to the classic 17th century
château, with a central entrance and tower, but there is a subtle symmetry at
work. Horizontal pointing in slate grey is used to emphasise linearity, while a
look at the architectural plans reveals further geometry. When viewed from
above, the estate comprises a circle, a rectangle and a triangle; seen in
elevation, the building’s design is based on a pyramid.
“We need right angles,” Mallet-Stevens once declared, a
phrase that is surely destined to appear on a T-shirt in the gift shop. Before
his death in 1945, he decreed that all his archives be destroyed, so his
uncompromising buildings are his legacy. Looking at Villa Cavrois today, now so
splendidly reborn, his fame seems assured.
Details
Villa Cavrois (villa-cavrois.monuments-nationaux.fr) opens
on June 13. The nearest tram stop is Villa Cavrois, a 25-minute ride from Gare
Lille Europe, see transpole.fr. A visit can be combined with one to La Piscine
(roubaix-lapiscine.com), an excellent art and textiles museum inventively
housed in a 1932 swimming pool in Roubaix. For more information, visit roubaixtourisme.com
