Sulaiman Bin Ahmed
Villa Fallet
Villa Fallet was built between the year 1906-1907 in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland. It was designed by the famous Swiss-born architect Charles-Edouard Jeanneret, who would later change his name to Le Corbusier. The idea of the house came from a humbler device i.e. the wristwatch. Earlier, Le Corbusier followed his father career path who enameled and engraved watch faces. Louis-Edouard Fallet was a professor in the school Le Corbusier attended, the professor had special interest in Le Corbusier and will take him on nature hikes up the Swiss Alps, showcasing the panorama below and making declarations such as "we will build a monument dedicated to nature." The professor decided to build an elegant home in the woods in resemblance to his colleague L'Eplattenier, he recommended Le Corbusier to his colleague Charles L'Eplattenier and asked Le Corbusier to design the home as he felt had more to his good future than engraving watch cases. René Chapallaz, a young local architect who recently moved to town and married the daughter of the owner of the Tavannes Watch Company was asked to assist Le Corbusier. The inexperienced Le Corbusier was not paid for the job but he was given a free hand to work out the project, he is credited with the ideas and organization of the home Villa Fallet (Sisson, 2015).
This chalet-style house, with a steep roof and balconies overlooking the city, takes its inspiration from the encircling pine forest. The flamboyant south facade has a frieze of stylized pine trees; pine motifs are carved into roof brackets; and window mullions angle heavenward like pine boughs. The solid stone corbels of the Jura, bear the main floor with crystalline formations. The exterior decoration reveals the high degree of craftsmanship that existed in the watch-making city. The house was built on a slope, the residence was meant to be a mirror to the surrounding Alpine scenery and Pouillerel forest, a reflection of the 'Folklore of the Fir Tree,’ Polychrome patterning on the facade referenced the grooves of a fir cone, the lines of the balcony were meant to refract the look of fir branches heavy with snow, and even the post-and-beam supports suggests trunks sunk in the sloping ground. Corbusier needed the help of his classmates and his recruited classmates to help design ornaments and decorations for the home's interior, and a watercolour he completed during the planning phase of the project shows how he arranged the different motifs and ideas. The wall surfaces, the aguilones, are decorated with ornaments that reproduce esgraflados spikes in the grounds of fir and pine nuts and leafy trees in their winter to the bottom of the windows (Anderson, 2010). A triangular geometric ornament that evokes the conifers, a theme that recurs in coatings for wood in the interior were employed. A warm polychromy-based reds, yellows and blues provides an air almost the entire East.
Reference
Sisson, P. (2015). 21 First Drafts: Le Corbusier's Villa Fallet. Architect first draft; curbed.
Anderson, S. (2010). Le Corbusier's Early Homes in Switzerland; The master's first houses in his hometown in Switzerland
Comments
Post a Comment