🇫🇷France·Private home, not open to visitors

Villa de Mandrot (Villa l'Artaude)

Le Pradet

Sources checked November 2026

“An L-shaped house on a stone base, opening south onto a terrace, where Le Corbusier leaves local materials, wood and stone, exposed.”

Year: 1929-1931
Architect: Le Corbusier
Type: Holiday house (private residence)
Access: Private property

In August 1929 Hélène de Mandrot, an artist and patron, asked Le Corbusier for a small holiday house, later built on land bought at Le Pradet. The architects gave up prefabricated steel cells and built an L-shaped house in stone; to the west, a concrete wind-break and a friends' pavilion close in a terrace open to the landscape together with it. Completed in July 1931, the villa has been a listed historic monument since 1987 and remains private property.

A private, lived-in home: it is not open to visitors. It is placed without an address, from a public source, at neighbourhood or city level.

In depth ≈ 2 min read

History

In 1928 Hélène de Mandrot, an artist and patron, got to know Le Corbusier at the first CIAM congress, which she hosted at her château de La Sarraz in Switzerland. In August 1929 she commissioned a small holiday house from him. She bought a plot at Le Pradet, and the contract with the architects, Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret, was signed on 9 July 1930.

The building site ended in July 1931, but water seepage showed up quickly. Between 1932 and 1936 several series of repairs dealt chiefly with waterproofing, the render on the exterior walls and the installation of roller shutters. The house, damaged during the Second World War, needed fresh work in 1945. Hélène de Mandrot lived in it until she died in December 1948. The villa, also known as Villa l'Artaude, was listed as a historic monument on 29 December 1987.

Architecture

At the outset the scheme drew on the Maisons Loucheur and relied on prefabricated steel cells. Talks with makers of metal structures fizzled out, and the design took another direction: it was built in traditional materials, stone above all. The house stands on a stone base, at the top of the plot. L-shaped, it continues westward with a concrete wind-break wall and a small pavilion for friends; these elements enclose the terrace, which opens a wide view over the landscape.

To the south the facade, with many windows, gives very broadly onto the terrace. To the north the only openings are two big glazed bays, one on each side of the entrance door, and a few windows lighting the basement; the rest of that facade is blind. In line with the entrance door, a stair leads down to the garden. The villa dates from the same period as Villa Savoye, but its facades are handled differently: Le Corbusier leaves local materials, wood and stone, visible here.

The house has a single storey above a basement containing an artist's studio and the garage. The reception rooms (dining room, kitchen) lie in the middle; on the short arm of the L are the owner's bedroom, with its bathroom, and the library, while the servants' quarters take the other end. The friends' pavilion is limited to a bedroom and toilets. The reinforced-concrete floors rest on walls of exposed stone, laid in opus incertum by local builders; the windows have metal frames. Two sculptures by Jacques Lipchitz were associated with the ensemble: Nu couché avec guitare (1928) on the terrace and Le chant des voyelles (1931-1932) on a plinth further into the garden.