Villas 50 en France by Raphaelle Saint Pierre (book)

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Villas 50 en France (book) by Raphaelle Saint Pierre and Claude Parent. 2005. 223 pages. Norma Editions. Very good condition, some marks on the dust jacket. French language.

While the design of the 50s was very fashionable and the architecture of the reconstruction was very studied, the private houses of this period remained little known. Reserved until then for the wealthy bourgeoisie who appealed to stars of modernity such as Robert Mallet-Stevens, Pierre Chareau or Le Corbusier, the villa experienced, with the emergence of a more modest enlightened bourgeoisie, a remarkable boom in post-war France. In the shadow of the large complexes, it constitutes a kind of laboratory that allows architects to innovate, but also to put into practice the knowledge and teachings of the masters, while diverting and adapting them, with the vitality and spirit of provocation characteristic of the time.

This domestic architecture, both experimental and materialist, often utopian, caricatured by Jacques Tati or Spirou, benefits from the help of the Salons and competitions organized by extraordinarily audacious and inventive magazines.

Showing to what extent its modernity differs from the theoretical purism that prevailed before the war, the author Raphaëlle Saint-Pierre analyzes in the first part of the book the French architectural vocabulary that is being established, nourished by American, Scandinavian, Japanese and Brazilian influences, balancing between organicism, rationalism, brutalism and total art, without deviating from the rules of functionality of the plan, the new imperatives of equipment and the relationship, now essential, between habitat and nature. In a second part, the detailed visit of twenty-five houses, built by masters such as Le Corbusier, André Lurçat, Alvar Aalto and Philip Johnson, by young architects such as Claude Parent or André Wogenscky, engineers and artists such as Jean Prouvé, André Bloc and Pierre Soulages, allows us to discover the richness of this profoundly original architectural heritage.

Feel free to check out the additional photos at the top left, thank you!

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