Radical chic ... Villa Savoye.
We catch our first glimpse of it splintered through the huge oak trees that grow along the path. Our hearts skip a beat, knowing we're about to see one of the definitive buildings of the 20th century – Villa Savoye – designed by that most modernist of modernists, Charles-Edouard Jeanneret, better known to the world as Le Corbusier.
The path meanders for a few more metres through the cool shade and then suddenly we step out into the sunlight. And there it is, gleaming white, suspended over a verdant lawn. Here is the house that would change the way we think about the way we live. The house that made everything that came before it seem terribly dated.
Three young boys and a girl are running on the lawn in front of Villa Savoye. The girl is picking yellow flowers from the grass and making a daisy chain. We can't help but smile at the cinema of the moment, this almost psychedelic, Kubrickesque vision of the future, a clean, lean future of perfect children and hovering, white, spacecraft houses. A future that, of course, never actually turned out as the modernists would have hoped.
Initially we are struck by the villa's radical simplicity. The house rests on slender concrete columns in the middle of a meadow in Poissy, 30 minutes' drive from the centre of Paris. The smooth white concrete facade is characterised by a continuous horizontal strip window, affording views from all sides over the Seine River valley.
Le Corbusier, in describing Villa Savoye, said: "The house is a box in the air with a long, continuous window running all round it ... an architectural play of solids and voids."
And although many at the time might have questioned the rather unusual facade, Le Corbusier explained that its function was purely and simply "to provide light and a view".
The house was commissioned in September 1928 by Mr and Mrs Pierre Savoye, who wanted a two-storey weekend residence that would offer enough space for their one child and any unexpected guests. It would also include a garage, servants' quarters, terraces and a warden's cottage.
When Le Corbusier was enlisted to design the home, he had just celebrated his 40th birthday. He was already a fully paid-up member of the Paris avant-garde, well regarded, not only as an architect with more than a dozen large houses to his credit but also as an artist and writer.
When finished in July 1931 (at a total cost of 900,000 francs), Villa Savoye demonstrated a completely new approach to domestic architecture that is still being realised today. Le Corbusier famously referred to the villa as "a machine for living in".
Unfortunately, the Savoyes themselves were not enthusiastic about the idea of living in such a machine, especially one that leaked like a sieve whenever it rained. Le Corbusier had the problems repaired but the owners were still largely unimpressed.
And so it was abandoned, to be used by soldiers of the occupying German forces, then by the Allied forces and, finally, as a barn. By 1958, the home was a crumbling shadow of its former self.
Thankfully, it was saved from demolition following pressure from architects across the world. In 1964, it was listed as a public building by the French Minister of Culture. Restoration work was carried out between 1963 and 1967, and again between 1985 and 1993.
Since 1992, Villa Savoye has been open to the public and receives 20,000 visitors a year, many of them architects, architectural students and design addicts.
Guests enter the house through a recessed, glass-walled entrance lobby. On the ground-floor level is a garage, servants' quarters, toilet, linen room and chauffeur's apartment.
Access to the first floor and the roof area is by either a spiral stair or a central ramp. Le Corbusier believed that while a stair separates one level from another, a ramp links them.
The almost-square plan is complex and free flowing, rooms opening into rooms that open into rooms.
Half the first floor is devoted to a living area and a large garden terrace. Large windows and sliding glass partitions between the terrace and living area and hallway flood the centre of the house with natural light and create a flexible space for living.
The blurring of the distinction between inside/outside is further emphasised by the terrace wall, which also features a long horizontal slit, making the house appear almost transparent. A small terrace for sunbathing is on the third level. This space is completely open to the sky but closed in by high walls that act as wind breaks. An opening in the wall frames the vista, focusing our attention on it.
The most palpable element when you step inside Villa Savoye is how incredibly light and airy it is. And you have to keep reminding yourself that this was built almost 80 years ago, in an age when most suburban houses were still being divided into dark, small rooms.
Much of the furniture that graces the house is built-in, an idea that Corbusier was toying with at the time. However, there's also a selection of original pieces for design mavens to drool over and even recline upon – such as the LC4 chaise lounge (or "relaxing machine" as Corb dubbed it) and a pair of LC2 petit club chairs in chrome and tan leather. All designed by the master himself.
The influence the house was to have on international architecture was profound.
You can see Villa Savoye and Le Corbusier in the work of many acclaimed architects, including our own Harry Seidler (his Rose Seidler House in Turramurra is an obvious case in point).
Australian architect Philip Cox is another who reveres Villa Savoye.
"I think it's one of the world's most remarkable houses and one that profoundly changed the direction of domestic architecture," he says.
TRIP NOTES
Villa Savoye, 82 rue de Villiers Poissy (33 kilometres north-west of Paris). Open daily except Mondays and public holidays. Adults €7 ($12), children (under 18) free.
From Paris, take the A line to Poissy Station, then bus number 50. Or take the A14 motorway.
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