Alvar Aalto Architect volume 20 Maison Louis Carré 1953-63

alvar aalto

maison louis carrÊ 1956–63

architect

volume 20

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Publishers

Alvar Aalto Foundation / Alvar Aalto Academy Archival Work Alvar Aalto Museum

Editorial board

Esa Laaksonen, Director, Alvar Aalto Academy (editor-in-chief) Arne Heporauta, Curator (research), Alvar Aalto Museum (scientific editor) Pekka Korvenmaa, Professor, University of Art and Design Markku Lahti, Director, Alvar Aalto Foundation Timo Tuomi, Head of the Research Department, Museum of Finnish Architecture

Editors

Esa Laaksonen, Architect Ásdís Ólafsdóttir, PhD, Art Historian

Picture editors

Marjo Holma Marja-Liisa Hänninen Katariina Pakoma Risto Raittila

Graphic design

Teppo Järvinen

Editorial secretary Tiina Purhonen Translations

Michael Wynne-Ellis Michelle Sommers (pp. 125–136) Desmond O’Rourke (pp. 92–123, 150–180)

Language editor

Michael Wynne-Ellis

paper

Stora Enso G-Print 150 g/m2

© Alvar Aalto Academy, Tiilimäki 20, FI 00330 Helsinki academy@alvaraalto.fi, www.alvaraalto.fi Printed by Vammalan Kirjapaino Oy, Vammala, Finland 2008 ISBN 978-952-5498-06-6 (hardback), ISBN 978-952-5498-05-9 (softback) ISBN 952-5498-00-x (complete set)

alvar aalto

architect

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maison louis carrĂŠ

1956–63

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contents “i speak of what is good”

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a home of design and art

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selected drawings

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louis carré. a life of passion and method

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interview with louis carré

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living at maison louis carré

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la maison carré Île de France (Bazoches-sur-Guyonne) Project description Alvar Aalto, 1961

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Esa Laaksonen

Ásdís Ólafsdóttir

From the Alvar Aalto Museum Antoine Terrasse Irmelin Lebeer

Ásdís Ólafsdóttir

works 1954–57

150 Mari Forsberg, Arne Heporauta, Päivi Lukkarinen Kainula Adult Education Institute, Kajaani Competition for the National Bank of Iraq, Baghdad Reorganisation of Lahti central square Plan for the Oulu University campus Lincoln Center, New York An experiment at Pirttikoski, Rovaniemi Korkalorinne Viitaniemi – a small garden city General Post Office, Baghdad, Iraq Competition for Marl Town Hall, Marl (former Federal Republic of Germany) Residential buildings for A. Ahlström Oy, Noormarkku Debarker plant on Sahamäki. A. Ahlström Oy, Karhula, Kotka Café and kiosk near the Pamilo power station. Enso-Gutzeit Oy, Uimaharju, Pamilo Summer house for Ilmari Luostarinen, Torsajärvi

151 152 153 154 155 157 158 169 175 176 178 179 180

to will grohmann

181 Alvar Aalto, in August 1966

text sources 182 1

2 3 4

A typical sketch by Alvar Aalto: a very preliminary sectional idea and site plans for Maison Louis Carré with rather final detail sketches for unidentified projects.

View of Maison Louis Carré from the south.

Aalto’s sketch for the entrance hall ceiling.

(From left:) Alvar Aalto, Elissa Aalto, Olga Carré and Louis Carré on the building site.

further reading

184

index

illustration sources

185 188

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“i speak of what is good”

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Esa Laaksonen

Prologue

I

was sitting at the desk in the Maison Louis Carré’s library, in front of my laptop, and stretched out my right hand. It happened upon a pile of books, the top one being A Pablo Picasso by Paul Eluard.2 It contains a dedication to Louis Carré.3 The book is one of a series in which authors describe their artist friends and it was published in Geneva right at the end of the Second World War, in December 1944.

The next in the pile, preserved in a plastic cover, is a proposal for a fine arts review from March 1941. Hand-drawn melancholic eyes stare out from the cover. The suggested name for this bulletin from March 1941 is “Plaisir des Yeux”. Dessins de Jean Cocteau (Pleasure of the Eyes. Drawings by Jean Cocteau) Edition de la Maison Carré.4 And when I looked around, everywhere radiated art and architecture: art framed by architecture; life, experience, everything.

This building has intrigued me for a long time. I have admired the design for more than thirty years, ever since I first saw photographs and drawings of it in 1975. At that time I was studying Alvar Aalto’s works5 as a young matriculate in order to enter the University Department of Architecture. At first I thought that “La Maison Carré” was a misspelling of a nickname, “the square house” (la maison carrée), but the first sentences in the books, of course, explained that the name of the house was based on the client’s surname.6 The architecture of the house was then overpowering, almost too much at ease to be true. Other questions were raised already thirty years ago – who was this Louis Carré who wished to have his home designed by a Finnish architect – and why? And, above all, how do architectural masterpieces like these come into being?7

“Je parle de ce qui est bien.” Quotation from the English translation by Joseph T. Shiplet in Éluard 1947, 27.

2 Eluard, 1944. Paul Eluard (1895–1952), French writer and poet.

3 See Ásdís Ólafsdóttir’s article Living at Maison Louis Carré on pp. 139–147 in this book.

4 Jean Maurice Eugene Clement Cocteau (1889–1963) was a French poet, writer, artist and film director. The original sketch is in the Collection Maison Louis Carré (CMLC) Bazoches.

One could romantically imagine that although the drawn image below the texts refers to the Maison Carrée in Nîmes, Cocteau’s suggested name for the publisher was an early reference to the name given later to Louis Carré’s home.

5 In particular through the books of Karl Fleig: Alvar Aalto. Band I 1922–1962, 1963; Alvar Aalto, 1975, 184–186.

6 In his interview with Irmelin Lebeer (see pages 129–137 of this book) Carré tells about his concern over a possible confusion with the Roman temple known as “Maison Carrée” in Nîmes, France.

7 My article describes the architectural and design principles of the house, and Ásdís Ólofsdóttir provides a more detailed description of the furniture and materials in her article A Home of Design and Art on pages 51–91 of this book.

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54, 55 In the Maison Carré, Aalto has succeeded in using detail with magical verve, manoeuvring the visitor to look in the desired direction – once again the main view – simultaneously calming the visual milieu in the other direction.

56 In its lucidity, the portico is a powerful object that exerts a strong spatial and emotional experience upon entering the house.

57 The peephole-like window of the dining room divides the front from the back garden.

58 The main entrance door; the door handle is an icon of Aalto’s architecture but was not specially designed for this house.

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59, 60 The stepped ceiling of the entrance areas can be seen day and night behind the delicate grille and square-shaped concrete beam.

61 A rare snowy winter view of the house from the early 1970s.

62 The shape of the ceiling of the Viipuri Library (1933–35) lecture hall was part of the façade composition; its second stratum in the same way as in the Maison Carré.

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Entering the house Entrance to the house is framed with a canopied portico. As with the terrace-like area in front of the library, the canopied area is also paved with travertine. Unlike the wood surfaced western front part, the underneath of the canopy is of smooth plastered concrete, which creates an entirely different character than that given by the narrow dark-coloured wood slats. The porch offered a fine view to the right, over the lily pond and the now vanished miniature vineyard towards the distant cypresses and open fields.

The walls around the entrance area are articulated quite distinctly from the rest of the main façade. The upper part is of brushed brick in which the brick to pointing proportion emphasises horizontality, and the lower wall is faced with travertine (“Pierre de Chartres” on the façades). The stone to brick proportions of the façade vary from one half to one third. The proportionality of the façade creates the feeling of a major event in a confined space. The travertine is slightly proud of the façade; placed on top of the brick wall and is edged by dark patinated copper sheet to accentuate the difference in levels and to cover the top of the stone. Copper sheeting is also used on the external window sills. This detail of the stone part of the façade is followed as far as the library window reveal where, beautifully finished, the stone returns to the level of the brick. The light colour of the materials and the use of travertine for emphasis, gives a certain dignity and tranquility to the act of entering. In addition to being used to surface the courtyard, travertine (“Pierre de Souppes” on the pavements)43 has been used for the wall as well as the lily pond that resembles the fountain in the Helsinki Rautatalo (1951–57) café.

Aalto had wished to give the building’s copper-faced columns a special, softening feature of varnished wooden strip “fins”.44 This gives compositional support to the load bearing structures and similarly conceals the “cold” metal under a layer of “warm” wood. Some of the details in the building appear almost exaggerated, such as the wood

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The stone used on the terrace and around the swimming pool is not the same Chartres limestone as used on the façades. The reason for this was probably the quality of the Chartres stone. In August 1966 Elissa Aalto describes the stone as “Pierre de Souppes”. CARAN. A similar material has been used in many buildings

by Aalto, as, for example, for the floors of the Academic bookshop building in Helsinki (1961–86).

44 In some early sketch the shape sought for in the columns is very powerful and resembles the blossom of some kind of narrow stemmed flower.

45 Drawing 21.5.1958. AAA 84-1630.

46 The scrapers are made of zinc, but in the most pragmatic way. Drawing 16.6.1958. AAA 84-1628.

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structures supporting the two gutters on the right hand side of the portico.45 Others, on the other hand, appear surprisingly ordinary, like the foot scrapers46 or the main door pull, which for some reason was not custom-made for this house: it is the bronze one designed for Rautatalo and which has become subsequently almost iconic of Aalto’s architecture.

The entrance area provides a hint of the interiors: the undulating hallway ceiling can be seen from behind the windows, especially if you arrive when darkness has descended. On the north façade there are vertical wooden grilles in front of the windows, irrespective of the nature of the space: whether toilet, clothes closet or rear light for the entrance area. On the other hand a very complex detail, the skylight of the dining room that so beautifully provides natural and artificial light, is concealed by the canopy and probably remains almost unnoticed from outside.

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130 Detail drawings for the library shelves.

Scale 1:500, 1:100, 1:10. 26.6.1958.

131, 132 The library receives its top lighting from the north. The balustrade-like bookcase dividing the different levels is a familiar feature of nearly all of Aalto’s library designs from the Viipuri Library onwards.

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Unfortunately this item, perhaps the most personal object in Louis Carré’s life, has been removed from among the possessions in the house. The revolving bookcase is in the library.

79 English translation by Joseph T. Shiplet in Eluard 1947, 29. The original is as follows: “Je parle de ce qui m’aide à vivre, de ce qui est bien.

Je ne suis pas de ceux qui cherchent á s’égarer, á s’oublier, en n’aimant rien, en réduisant leurs besoins, leurs goûts, leurs désirs, en conduisant leur vie, c’est-à-dire la vie, à la répugnante conclusion de leur mort. Je ne tiens pas à me soumettre le monde par la seule puissance virtuelle de l’intelligence, je veux que tout me soit sensible, réel, utile, car ce n’est qu’à partir de là que je conçois mon existence. L’homme ne peut être que dans sa propre réalité. Il faut qu’il en ait conscience. Sinon, il n’existe pour les autres que comme un mort, comme une pierre ou comme du fumier.” Eluard, 1944, 27.

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Epilogue The library When I stretch out my left hand it happens upon a pile of the house’s red leather bound guest books: Duchamp... Kekkonen... Miró... Le Corbusier...

I have been in the heart of the house. For a few sultry summer days in June and August 2006, I had the incredible good fortune to be able to write this article sitting at the desk Alvar Aalto designed for Louis Carré and to walk around the building, drawings in hand, like a site architect. For me, the room where I worked, the library, is undoubtedly the most intimate and tactile one in the house. Carré brought here the only piece of furniture from the apartment he had been living in before moving to Bazoches. This was a small revolving bookcase/writing desk on top of which was an ink and paper stand, in a way the centrepiece of his life: a calendar, a map showing French postal numbers, and a place for his pens, pencils and notepads.78 Aalto knew how to design libraries and although Carré’s is one of the smallest, it is by no means the most modest. Greatness is born of the architect’s sense of dimension, architectural intimacy, details and – most important – the tradition of building. Carré stated that the only single thing he demanded from the architect of the house was an understanding of proportion. It is difficult to imagine that the almost sacral difference in the ground levels of the library is the same as between the hallway and the living room. Sitting in it, it is even difficult to sense that the library is a part of the reception area formed by the hallway and the space at the lower level. It is a world of its own.

The bookcases are veneered in oak or with solid wood mouldings, and every nook and cranny has its own detail: different kinds of drawers, up-and-over doors, grilles. Light enters either from above on the left, from the north, or directly via the terrace to the landscape.

Between the curtains and the glass of the windows are translucent

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Venetian blinds covered with a grey fabric. These blinds were added shortly after the house was completed, yet another recollection of the Villa Mairea, where a similar detail can be found on the upper wall between the library and the living room.

• As I began this article by describing the book my right hand touched that lay on top of a pile on the desk, Paul Eluard’s volume on Pablo Picasso, it seems only fitting to end my writing with the opening sentence of the same book. Although Eluard was describing his friend Pablo Picasso, his words could equally apply to Alvar Aalto and Louis Carré, the architect and the owner of the house, two seekers after perfection and prophets of a shared vision.

“I speak of what helps me to live, of what is good. I am not one of those that seek to wander off, to find forgetfulness, by loving nothing, by diminishing their needs, their tastes, their desires, by leading their lives – that is, life – to the hateful end, to their death. I do not insist upon subjecting the world solely by the potential force of the intellect. I want everything to be sensible, real, useful, to me; for it’s at this point I conceive my existence starts. Man cannot exist save in his own reality. He must be aware of it. If not, he exists for others but as a corpse, as a stone, or as manure.”79

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a home of design and art

Ásdís Ólafsdóttir

“[Alvar Aalto] is extremely sensitive to materials.

I think that is related to his poetic talent; he is a poet.”

Louis Carré 19671

T

he interior design of Maison Louis Carré is extremely complex and all embracing including everything from the fittings, furniture and lamps to the door handles and textiles. All of them were designed either by Alvar Aalto himself or by his collaborators at the Aalto office or at Artek. Although some were standard items, many were designed especially for the house. It is striking to observe how carefully the varieties of wood, other materials and colours were chosen to form a perfectly harmonious interior, a coherent whole reflecting Louis and Olga Carré’s universe and lifestyle.

In addition to the numerous architectural and interior drawings, there still survive several of the plans made in Finland that included samples of materials in order to better harmonise the overall tones.2 A large plan of the ground floor from as early as March 1957 shows cloth, leather and wood samples for all the main rooms, with the corresponding furniture numbers, textile indications, etc. This choice, of course, evolved over the next two years until the house was completed and occupied by the Carrés in June 1959, but the basic disposition of the fittings, furniture and colours remained the same.

Similar sample plans of individual rooms were also made, including the staff dining room and the bedrooms on the first floor, showing the thorough attention paid to every detail throughout the house.

Maison Carré was intended as the permanent home and venue to receive guests, artists and clients, as well as the setting to display the owner’s fabulous collection of modern art. The interior spaces are thus articulated into three parts: the public, the private and the service areas. Each part has its own characteristics and atmosphere, where the architecture is underlined and completed by the fittings, the furniture and other design features. In order to embrace the richness of this

interior design, the reader will first be lead through these different areas, room by room, and then into the garden and the pool house.

The final focus will be on the building’s role as an art collector’s home and on the way it was perceived and emphasised as a work of art in itself.

As the house did not change owners between 1959 and 2006, most of the interior design has been preserved, although changes naturally occurred over the years.3 The purpose here is to give as precise a picture as possible of the interior design as it was during the first years of the Carrés’ occupation, at the time when it corresponded perfectly to Alvar and Elissa Aalto’s vision of this complete work of architecture and design.4

Interview with Irmelin Lebeer, 24 July 1967, see p. 135 in this book.

The drawings used can be consulted in several archives: at the Alvar Aalto Museum in Jyväskylä, Finland (AAM), and the Collection of Maison Louis Carré, Bazoches-sur-Guyonne (CMLC). A great part of Louis Carré’s archives, notably his correspondence, is in the Centre d’accueil et de recherche des Archives nationales in Paris (CARAN), but Olga Carré withdrew the drawings and stored them in the house.

3 When the Association Alvar Aalto en France became owners of the villa in spring 2006, most of the furniture, books and objects remained in the house. In Olga Carré’s time (1977–2002) a few pieces of furniture were removed and are now with her heirs. In the following text, items that have been moved or replaced are described in the past tense.

4 The main sources are plans, drawings and photographs in the AAM and the CMLC, as well as letters and lists in the Alvar Aalto Museum in Helsinki (AAM) and the CARAN. 1

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234 Section, ceiling vault of foyer. Scale 1:200. Undated. AAA 84-1382.

235 Longitudinal section B-B through entrance. Scale 1:200. 18.11.1956 (altered 4.1.1957). AAA 84-1399.

236 Cross section D-D through living room. Scale 1:150. 4.2.1957 (corrected 9.3.1957, 4.4.1957). AAA 84-1409.

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248 Swimming pool building, rear ventilation openings. Scale 1:50, 1:5. 3.1.1963. AAA 84-1573.

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249 Library steps. Attention focuses on the elegant beading on the front. Scale 1:75, 1:37,5, 1:3,75. 17.3.1958. AAA 84-1618.

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Alvar Aalto Architect Volume 20

Maison Louis Carré 1956–63 After the Villa Mairea, the Maison Louis Carré is the most carefully executed and detailed of the private houses designed by Alvar Aalto. Built for a wealthy Parisian art dealer, the house is situated in the small village of Bazoches-sur-Gyuonne, in the historic rural landscape near Versailles and Chartres. Aalto made the house an integral part of this landscape. Although the Maison Louis Carré is an expression of Aalto at his most mature, it also embraces the youthful architectonic ideas of his second wife, Elissa Aalto.

In her articles, A Home of Design and Art and Living at Maison Louis Carré, Ásdís Ólafsdóttir deals with life in the house and the complex process of designing its interiors, with particular reference to the specially made unique pieces of furniture.

In his essay, “I speak of what is good”, Esa Laaksonen discusses the architecture of the building as a complete work of art and its relationship to Aalto’s other designs.

His analysis largely centres around the hitherto unpublished sketches, working drawings and photographs in the collections of the Alvar Aalto Museum.

Antoine Terrasse describes Louis Carré’s rich and eventful life, a story complemented by Irmelin Lebeer’s interview with the art dealer in the 1960s. Louis Carré was a leading figure in the art world of the last century and his scholarly works on medieval French silver are still considered essential reading on the subject.

The book also presents other works produced by Aalto’s office contemporaneous with the Maison Louis Carré design, 1955–57.

Arne Heporauta’s list of realised and unrealised projects is complemented by Päivi Lukkarinen’s article on the Korkalovaara housing area in Rovaniemi and Mari Forsberg’s article on housing for the Viitaniemi garden town in Jyväskylä.

ISBN 978-952-5498-05-9

9 789525 498059