Villa Church

Two Americans, Barbara and Henry Church, called on Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret to renovate and build a set of buildings at Ville-d'Avray, set in a large wooded park. The brief covered three projects: restoring the classical main villa the couple rented (building C), adding an annex on the structure of the former stables (A), and rehabilitating an old pavilion (B).

Work on the main villa was quick and limited to a few changes, whereas the annex took longer. In 1963 the villa was pulled down; the Résidence du Parc de Saint-Cloud now stands in its place.

For the annex, Le Corbusier retained some of the existing walls for reasons of sound and thermal insulation, and the wall along the street, out of respect for the old look of the district. The building itself opens without reserve onto the park: the original front was swapped for concrete posts and walls, balconies, walkways and glass screens.

The ground floor takes in the garages, the domestic staff's rooms and the hall. Upstairs are the bedrooms, each with a bathroom, the dining room, a lounge with a mezzanine loft and a library connecting directly with the roof garden.

The third project dealt with an old pavilion that had belonged to a different property: heavy earthworks made it possible to join the two plots. A walkway leaves the roof terrace of house A and reaches house B. That roof terrace gives direct access to the first floor, where the library is, whose furniture was drawn for it by Le Corbusier, Pierre Jeanneret and Charlotte Perriand: seating in chromed steel tube and fitted shelves with sliding panels. A music room was set up on the ground floor.