The design of Gray’s Bibendum chair (pictured) was inspired by the inflated tire shape of the Michelin Man. A house, the Irish architect Eileen Gray once said, should be a kind of living creature. Above “formulas,” above “beautiful ensembles of lines,” above anything else, a house should be centered on “life,” she said. “The poverty of modern architecture stems from the atrophy of sensuality.” Perhaps no house has ever lived up to these dictates quite like Gray’s own E-1027, a relatively modest 1, 400-square-foot villa near Roquebrune-Cap-Martin in the South of France. Gray began working on E-1027 in 1926, completing its designs three years later, in 1929, when she was 51. Although its genius perhaps should have seemed readily apparent, it took decades until she received the critical acclaim for it that her male peers—Le Corbusier and Walter Gropius among them—received in spades This story is from Kinfolk Issue Thirty-One Buy Now Related Stories Interiors Issue 43 Home Tour: Rose Uniacke An elegant palazzo—in Pimlico. Design Interiors Issue 41 Home Tour: Patricia Reid Baquero Cloistered behind ancient walls and crammed with a catalog of curios, an interior designer’s Santo Domingo home is an autobiography writ from ruins. Fashion Interiors Issue 40 Home Tour: Lucinda Chambers Inside the west London townhouse at the heart of the British fashion establishment. Interiors Issue 38 Home Tour: Arcosanti Sci-fi lair, Mediterranean village, utopian ecosystem: Tim Hornyak peers inside Arizona’s experimental desert community. Arts & Culture Design Issue 24 Isabel & Ruben Toledo To enter the loft of Isabel and Ruben Toledo is to ascend into a Borgesian sense of infinitude. Interiors Issue 24 At Home With: Roberto Baciocchi Restrained in his work as an architect, Roberto Baciocchi likes to let loose at home.
Design Interiors Issue 41 Home Tour: Patricia Reid Baquero Cloistered behind ancient walls and crammed with a catalog of curios, an interior designer’s Santo Domingo home is an autobiography writ from ruins.
Fashion Interiors Issue 40 Home Tour: Lucinda Chambers Inside the west London townhouse at the heart of the British fashion establishment.
Interiors Issue 38 Home Tour: Arcosanti Sci-fi lair, Mediterranean village, utopian ecosystem: Tim Hornyak peers inside Arizona’s experimental desert community.
Arts & Culture Design Issue 24 Isabel & Ruben Toledo To enter the loft of Isabel and Ruben Toledo is to ascend into a Borgesian sense of infinitude.
Interiors Issue 24 At Home With: Roberto Baciocchi Restrained in his work as an architect, Roberto Baciocchi likes to let loose at home.