But not for long. Gray
and her lover split soon
after the house was
completed – while Gray
craved peace, Badovici,
it seems, craved the he-
donism he had left be-
hind in Paris – and she
moved further along the
coast. In the late 1930s,
Le Corbusier came to
stay with Badovici and
was permitted to daub
the pristine walls with
obscene and lurid mu-
rals, a deed Gray viewed
as an act of brazen ag-
gression against her
work and theories. Le
Corbusier’s obsession
with the house is well
documented; having de-
faced the property, he
tried and failed to buy it
several times, eventu-
ally building a ‘cabanon’
on the perimeter to allow
him to forever lurk near-
by. He drowned in the
sea in front of E 1027
in 1965, the house per-
haps the last thing he
ever saw.
Eileen Gray never re-
turned to her most fa-
mous construction. She
moved back to Paris
after the war and con-
tinued her work in the
peace she had always
wanted, fading into ob-
scurity before enjoying
a resurgence in popu-
larity shortly before her
death aged 98 in 1976.
E 1027
has
had
an
unhappy
history.
On
Badovici’s death, it was
bought
by
a
Swiss
heiress who left it to
her gynaecologist, who
sold all of Gray’s cus-
tom-made furniture and
was then murdered by
the gardener. Squatters
took over and hastened
its decline still further
before the French gov-
ernment finally bought
it in 1999. The rehabili-
tation process has been
torturous, but in sum-
mer 2015 the house
was at last reopened to
the public.
P 104
