15 - Maison-atelier du Amédée Ozenfant

15 - Maison-atelier du Amédée Ozenfant - Le Corbusier - 1922

53 Av. Reille, Paris

Amédée Ozenfant is a painter. In 1919, he founded the magazine L’Esprit nouveau with Le Corbusier. In 1923, Le Corbusier and his cousin built a house-studio for Ozenfant. This is the first work that Le Corbusier builds in Paris. By then, he had already studied new materials (reinforced concrete), and also developed some of the more important works of his youth and with them, his theories on housing, standardization, new structural systems and architectural language.

The building is in the “paquebot” style of the Art Deco school. The apartment is located on the ground floor, while the workshop occupies the second and third floor. The double-height workshop is favored over the living rooms illuminated by the strip window on the lower level. The whiteness of the walls is emphasized by the void of the double height. It is in these artists’ studios where light is magnified that the modern space appears after the overcrowded studios of the 19th century. Here the painter frees himself from the heavy bourgeois conventions. Originally, the large glass roof was covered by glass sheds providing zenithal light; today they have been replaced by a terrace. The two corner facades are treated with simplicity, with large bay windows providing optimum lighting. Only a small concrete spiral staircase animates the strict volumetry of the building. The house has been transformed, the garage removed, the rhythm of the first floor windows changed and the interior volumes partitioned.

Here the house is characterized above all by a systematic standardization of the elements of construction (framework, windows, staircases) The architecture of the house is opposed to the regionalist or academic research, takes again the idea of purity and exploits the novelty brought by the reinforced concrete enveloped by a white coating revealing the eloquence of the architectural volume. it is the perfect illustration of Le Corbusier’s “ purist period “. The Ozenfant house is partially listed (facades and roofs) as a historical monument by a decree in 1975. 72