Maison de Verre
(15 votes, average: 4.07 out of 5)
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Location:
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31 Rue St-Guillaume
Paris
75007
France
coordinates:
48.8538132 2.3282540
Building names(s): Maison de Verre / Maison Dalsace
Architect/Designer:
Pierre Chareau
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Bernard Bijvoet, Louis Dalbet
architect website:
Other Information:
Completion date: 1932
Function: residential
tour/visiting:To visit, you must be in the field of architecture or a related field. You must also reserve in advance by calling 01.45.44.91.21 (country code +33) or emailing [email protected] Be sure to state the purpose of your tour. The tours only occur on Thursdays and a maximum of ten people are allowed per visit.
admission cost: 40 euros per person, 20 euros for students and professors of architecture.
getting there:
31, rue Saint-Guillaume , 7th Arrondisement
Metro: M4 to Saint-Sulpice or St. Germain-des-Prés, M10/M12 to Sevres-Babylone, M12 to Rue du Bac
Last modified: 30 June, 2011 | Suggested by Hannah B
(2 votes, average: 4.50 out of 5)
“The Maison de Verre itself has been described as an elaborate piece of furniture. It was commissioned in the late 1920s by Dr. Jean Dalsace and his wife, Annie, who had bought the site, an existing 18th-century hôtel particulier, but were unable to evict the woman who lived on the top floor. As a result Chareau was obliged to carve out his creation underneath her apartment. Viewed from just inside the courtyard the house looks like a glowing translucent box, its great glass-block facade embedded in the 18th-century fabric and capped by the old one-story apartment level above…..
… Chareau conceived its interior as a delicate composition of interlocking forms, with the two-story private quarters seeming to float atop the doctor’s office on the first floor. Upon entering, you can either descend a few steps into the doctor’s waiting room or turn back and climb a broad staircase. From there you turn again before stepping up into the double-height grand salon of the private quarters, which is illuminated through the towering glass block wall.
The series of turns is a shrewd strategy. With each step the old Paris — the world of medieval squares and 19th-century boulevards — grows more distant, allowing you to become enveloped in Chareau’s fantasy. A towering metal bookcase of small richly bound volumes stands along the salon’s back wall. Stairs lead to a narrow balcony that frames two sides of the salon and continues on to the bedrooms. The only views of the outside world are at the back of the house, which overlooks a small private garden.
…the house is above all an exquisite machine. Chareau worked closely with Louis Dalbet, a talented ironworker, and the house’s detailing has as much in common with centuries-old craft traditions as with the efficiency of the 20th-century assembly line. Big curved perforated metal screens at the bottom of the entry stair rotate to shut the apartment off from the office below. A rolling ladder set along the salon bookcase is fabricated from a single piece of steel pipe and inlayed with wood. The glistening brass window casements at the back of the house are assembled from the window panels of a passenger train.” read more @ NY Times
Constructed in the early modern style of architecture, the house’s design emphasized three primary traits: honesty of materials, variable transparency of forms, and juxtaposition of “industrial” materials and fixtures with a more traditional style of home décor. The primary materials used were steel, glass, and glass block. Some of the notable “industrial” elements included rubberized floor tiles, bare steel beams, perforated metal sheet, heavy industrial light fixtures, and mechanical fixtures.
The program of the home was somewhat unusual in that it included a ground-floor medical suite for Dr. Jean Dalsace. This variable circulation pattern was provided for by a rotating screen which hid the private stairs from patients during the day, but framed the stairs at night.