Villa Stein

Brief information

Villa Stein was conceived as one house for two related families, but it was not arranged like a conventional private residence. The de Monzies occupied the lower main part, the Steins the upper part with the terrace, while the rooms themselves were shared. Because of this arrangement, the house is read not only through its facade, but also through the distribution of levels: the architecture immediately shows how the owners divided the space without fully separating their lives.

Le Corbusier built the villa in 1927-1928, during his period of white facades and strict geometric lines. Later, in the late 1960s, it was divided into five apartments. This fact changes how one sees the building: before the viewer is not simply an early modernist house, but a formerly unified villa that a new function cut into separate dwellings.

What to notice right away

It makes sense to compare three things: the facade, the roof, and the house's internal logic. The facade is made of concrete and glass, but at the same time it is freed from the role of a load-bearing wall. This is connected with the open plan: the interior walls work as partitions, not as supports. That is why the long windows along the facade are needed not only for the view, but for the light that was meant to enter every room.

On the roof, the terrace and panoramic deck, resembling a captain's bridge, are important. The maritime image is not accidental: for Le Corbusier, ocean liners were models of aesthetics. Inside, another key element is the niches and wall slots for paintings. The house was designed with a collection of modern art in mind, so the empty sections of wall here are not a pause, but part of the concept: they left space for painting in advance.