Jaoul Houses

André Jaoul had been in touch with Le Corbusier since 1937, about a weekend house that was never built. In 1951 he came back with a new project for two families: his own and that of his son Michel. Le Corbusier soon dropped the idea of a single house and proposed two separate but adjoining houses, one for the parents (house A) and one for the children (house B).

Le Corbusier built the two houses between 1953 and 1955, in association with the architects André Wogenscky, German Samper and Jacques Michel. House A was handed over in 1953; André Jaoul's death held up work on the second, which was completed at the end of 1955. An order of 29 June 1966 listed the facades and roofs of both houses as historic monuments.

The Jaoul families lived there until 1987; Sotheby's then sold the houses to a collector with a keen interest in modern architecture. A first restoration took place in 1991, supervised by Jacques Michel, a collaborator of Le Corbusier, and Salvatore Bertocchi, the masonry contractor on the original building site: it dealt with the outside concrete, the waterproofing of the terraces and the exterior joinery, and brought the plumbing and wiring up to standard. The houses changed hands again in 2000. In 2018-2019 a further campaign worked again on the facades in brick and raw concrete, on the outer joinery and on the waterproofing of the terraces.

House A runs parallel to the street; house B stands behind it at right angles. A shared basement holds a garage, reached from the street by a ramp. The two houses have the same layout: hall, living room and kitchen on the ground floor, bedrooms and bathrooms on the first and second floors.

The reinforced-concrete structure shows the shape of the so-called Catalan vaults of the roofs, which combine vaults of flat tiles with planted roofs. The facades alternate brick walls and bands of raw concrete; outside, brick, wood and raw concrete set up contrasts of texture and colour. Le Corbusier used the Modulor, with bays of 2.66 m by 2.66 m and of 3.66 m.

These are private houses, not open to visitors; their facades can be seen from outside.