La Maison de Verre is more than just an architectural icon. It is rather an immortalisation of the everyday life of an affluent middle-class couple, even arguably a window into the collective psyche of the professional bourgeoisie in Europe the interwar period.
La Maison de Verre is the medium in which the d’Alsaces chose to communicate their principles (and social stature) to the world; however, the house perhaps betrays more than the doctor and his wife chose to consciously divulge.
The house’s official narrative about embracing genuinely cutting-edge technology, the latest advancements in medicine as well as tenets of social justice, is evident. Pierre Chareau and his associates have succeeded in implementing their clients’ brief to a tee and beyond. The house gave the d’Alsaces the show they wanted to put on, possibly the best show in town with the pomp and the gimmicks and the spectacle and the bright lights and the drama. The house’s meticulous design and insight into the minutiae of the everyday life of the family and their staff is quite impressive. The doctor was very attentive into accommodating the vulnerability and privacy of his patients. Both the doctor and his wife were sensitive to fair treatment of their staff, too sensitive rather to render being served invisible which may cast their motives as perhaps cynical or hypocritical but it’s difficult to tell since what the clients outlined in their brief versus what the architect interpreted is not very clear.
Yet, one can’t help but infer that the d’Alsaces’ embrace of the avant-garde stemmed, consciously or subconsciously, from the professional bourgeoisie’s class anxiety. The avant-garde style was an appropriate taste to be embraced by a sophisticated and discerning professional class that did not wish to appropriate (and fail at appropriating) the tastes of the landed upper classes. Modernist architecture was a style the middle class could comfortably call their own without the risk of being perceived as style marauders. Embracing the new and modernity in general was the middle class prerogative.
As far as how the house accommodated the programme, is it far-fetched that the d’Alsaces’ relationship was fraught with tension? The architecture seems to imply that their marriage was precarious: The doctor and his wife had their own quarters that sometimes overlapped but mostly co-existed in parallel. The doctor and his wife had adjoining yet separate sitting rooms that were connected to their respective quarters within the house. The house was designed to accommodate two microcosms that could function independently and the technology in how the house was fabricated as a sum of myriad machines facilitates, nay encourages this segregation.
La maison de verre is a testament to the power of architecture. Long after people are gone, buildings and spaces remain snapshots or rather ledgers of how people lived, how they viewed the world and sometimes their subconscious thoughts. Psychology is an instrumental discipline that is arguably the lynchpin of architecture; yet, it is something that tends to be ignored or not taken seriously. Our production is predicated on human behaviour, both conscious and subconscious, which if we choose to decode, we may unlock a vast untapped opportunity that not only can be monetised but also reinvent the profession and perhaps rescue it from irrelevance as the world is cataclysmically changing around us.
Speaking of irrelevance, yes, lunchtime CPD on brick slips, I am talking to you.
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