le corbusier | villa savoye

Poissy station has its own soundtrack, as if someone's left a boombox on the tracks. Possibly John Maus. I imagine it's what would be running through my head if I had the guts for the David Lynch all-nighter at the Champo here in Paris (their logo is Jacques Tati and they give you breakfast after the 7 or so hours.)

In Poissy the town signs are sponsored by McDonalds and the scenery caters for all realms.



"What will the villa savoye sound like?" my shoulder (yawning with equipment) asked. Well, it sounded like toddlers and digital cameras. One man had the right idea and spent his entire stay in an armchair. We lounged, found nice reflections. I checked the taps (again) and Alex wouldn't believe that the kitchen was scaled smaller for women.

Le Corbusier's meeting with Josephine Baker in 1929 apparently "unlocked his sense of Rio." Ok we're still in the mythic/exotic realm, but it's 1931 and hardly rivals Future System's "I was inspired by my boyfriend's back" at Sadler's Wells (most memorable powerpoint faux pas of 2006)



Fly off 1: Josephine Baker is the name of my local swimming pool. It floats on the seine, with windows at water level linking the inside and out.


Fly off 2: Martha Rosler's Semiotics of the Kitchen was made in one of le Corbusier's housing projects.

Fly off 3.1: You can now buy your own modernist house and also get matching china.



Fly off 3.2: A micro dwelling would make a nice home. The first external white walls I saw were in the Greek countryside, I can see these slotting together there. In fact, the extension process they propose mirrors the traditional Greek method of building. A circle to be drawn, back to le Corbusier's mediterranean adventures? (Did he mention the women though?)

No, but fly off 4: a short read on modern architecture and feminism via Charlotte Perriand a close collaborator of le Corbusier. It (scarcely) mentions the sexual division of labour before and after Simone de Beauvoir's the Second Sex. But hints at a negative bias that made me stop and trackback. Which brings me to:

fly off 5: The Simone de Beauvoir bridge opened last summer. It can be found next to the Josephine Baker piscine (!) Ace to cycle across, there is a formal comparison to be made between the two, what with those undulating planks. It also joins two of my favourite places - the Cinematheque Francaise (Frank Gehry) and the Bibliotheque Nationale de France:



One last circle: I tried recording the bridge one day as I heard gossip about wobbles which hints at some major resonance, but I think that was just a Foster spies/UK press collaboration, and any which way the traffic nearing the peripherique is overwhelming.

Endnote: Here we see the BNF and Josephine Baker piscine in an ad for the cité de l'architecture et du patrimoine extension.