A modernist gem in Paris, meticulously restored

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ÉRIC TOUCHALEAUME WAS a teenager in the late 1960s when his cultured and itinerant parents moved the family from Bordeaux to the Auteuil section of the 16th arrondissement in Paris. Now in his sixties, the eminent mid-20th-century French design dealer spent those early days exploring his new neighborhood on the edge of the Bois de Boulogne, passing sought-after secular homes with facades in bisque stone and quiet courtyards.

One afternoon, when he was 15, he came across a small private street that would shape his future: rue Mallet-Stevens, a row of five giant and dilapidated Modernist townhouses from the 1920s. Touchaleaume was struck by one house in particular, n ° 10, Hôtel Martel: the names of its first owners were still engraved in the glass of the door. An arrangement of concrete cubes with a three-story turret topped by an umbrella-shaped roof with a red glazed tile underside, the structure also had faded yellow blinds that gave a Piet Mondrian effect. Despite its dilapidation, the large manor house moves him deeply.

But it wasn’t until the late 1980s, more than a decade after becoming an art and antiques dealer specializing in the early French modernist period – designers like Charlotte Perriand, Le Corbusier and Jean Prouvé – that Touchaleaume finally set foot in the monolithic house he had never forgotten. He was there to buy four figurative sculptures from the former ground-floor workshop of jazz-age sculptors Jan and Joël Martel, twin brothers whose public statuary is found throughout France, including the Claude Debussy fountain. from 1932 on boulevard Lannes nearby. The brothers had commissioned the 5,000 square foot house, with three residential apartments (one for each of them and one for their father) and a workshop, in 1926; like all structures on the block, it was the creation of French architect Robert Mallet-Stevens, a largely forgotten Modernist early master. A contemporary of Le Corbusier and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, he designed the series of buildings as a model for Une Cité Moderne, a break with the stilted proportions and ornamentation promulgated in the 19th century by Baron Haussmann, who had redone the boulevards and the aesthetics of Paris.

Hadn’t he asked that his archives and sketches be destroyed after his death, in 1945 at the age of 58 (he and his wife, Andrée, who was Jewish, spent most of the war in the southwest of France), Mallet-Stevens, who also designed the film sets, furniture and retail spaces, could today be as famous as Le Corbusier. Coming from an aristocratic Franco-Belgian family, the architect, who had grown up in the wealthy Parisian suburb of Maisons-Laffitte, created some of the great French ultraminimalist estates of the 20th century between the wars, including the austere mansion 1920s by surrealist patrons Charles and Marie-Laure de Noailles in the Riviera town of Hyères, and the 25-room villa of couturier Paul Poiret in Mézy-sur-Seine, one hour west of the capital, started in 1922 but left unfinished when Poiret’s company went bankrupt. (It was completed after the war for a new owner by architect Paul Boyer.) Mallet-Stevens’ designs, which used reinforced concrete, then a relatively new material in Parisian architecture – Henry van de Velde and Auguste Perret in 1913 Théâtre des Champs-Élysées was a notable predecessor – were scalpel-precise and devoid of ornamentation, but decidedly more welcoming and luxurious than those of his Bauhaus contemporaries. While Le Corbusier was interested in reinventing practical housing for the masses (some of his most important projects were social housing developments), Mallet-Stevens was a pure esthete. Although he built a public commission, a fire station in the 16th arrondissement, he mainly worked for wealthy avant-garde clients, marrying the discipline and pure geometry of the Netherlands-based Stijl for years. 1920, with the luxuriance of Art Deco.

Best known for challenging traditional country castle orthodoxy, he was by nature an urban planner. Funded by the Parisian banker Daniel Dreyfus, for whom he built n ° 7, rue Mallet-Stevens, inaugurated in July 1927, welcomes a group of bohemians keen on modern architecture, including Eric Allatini, writer and choreographer, and his wife , Hélène Allatini, who ran a literary salon at home (n ° 3-5). (During World War II the couple were arrested by the French Gestapo, who requisitioned their house and sent them to Drancy, near Paris; they died in Auschwitz after being transferred there in 1943.) Mallet-Stevens lived and worked in la maison du coin, n ° 12. The original vision called for the construction of another lot, but these plans were foiled by the stock market collapse of 1929.

DECADES LATER, IN 2007, Touchaleaume saw a listing in the newspaper for Jan Martel’s old duplex at No.10, and quickly purchased the apartment, which is accessed from the central spiral staircase. (There is a long-time tenant in Joël’s duplex.) # 10 is the only house in the block that remains fully intact, complete with its original hardware and fixtures, having escaped the unfortunate renovations and additions that are occurring. are shot down on others. Eight years later, Touchaleaume also purchased the adjoining 1,900 square foot L-shaped studio, moving into it his art and antiques showroom, Galerie 54.

It was not the dealer’s first disproportionate gesture. Known for his ingenuity and relentlessness, he had traveled years earlier to Niamey, Niger, and Brazzaville, Republic of the Congo, to bring back three Tropical Homes, prototypes of prefabricated flat housing made of bent steel. and aluminum panels that Prouvé had designed. in 1949 for the French colonies. Touchaleaume restored the dilapidated structures and then sold one at a Christie’s auction to hotelier André Balazs for nearly $ 5 million. (It was exhibited in front of Tate Modern in London in 2008.)

Thus, the gallerist was not deterred by the prospect of restoring the Hotel Martel to its original state, as well as the level of disrepair, the need for constant maintenance and even the inconveniences of living and working. in a highly conceptual space. “I have always liked the poetry of abandoned buildings” of the interwar period, he says, “this utopia of modernism”.

Mallet-Stevens designed from the inside out, researching how the occupants intended to use their homes. The architect considered light to be an important design element: at the Hôtel Martel, the sun penetrates through the huge south and east-facing mullioned windows of the studio and the 90-degree corner panes. from the master bedroom. Mallet-Stevens had designed the central heating, as well as bathrooms with hot and cold running water, still rare in Parisian houses at the time. (Touchaleaume has preserved and restored the original bulky porcelain fixtures.) The bedroom floors, made from a mixture of powdered cork and cement, were an early experience in insulation and soundproofing, and The steps of the central staircase were made of terrazzo, a material at the time. largely confined to swimming pools and butchers. (Round mirrors on the floor and ceiling multiply the stairs to infinity.) Using chromatic research by the curators of the Mallet-Stevens retrospective at the Center Pompidou in 2005, Touchaleaume restored the walls to their original colors, from the buttery Naples yellow in the living room to the chalky shades of blue and gray in the small kitchen, which retains its original layout and accessories, including a clever sliding shelf.

Many interior decorations are also preserved. The geometric white, silver and red stained glass window of the stairwell, which spans almost the entire height of the tower which connects the workshop to the living quarters, is by Louis Barillet, including the vast house and the 15th century workshop. later Mallet-Stevens district. Édouard-Joseph Bourgeois, who designed several rooms in the Villa Noailles under his nickname Djo-Bourgeois, built a space-saving storage module that follows the contours of the stairwell. Touchaleaume is so true to Mallet-Stevens’ vision that he sleeps in the short, narrow double bed the architect designed for Jan Martel.

Although the apartments above the studio remain as sparsely furnished as they were when the twin sculptors occupied them, Touchaleaume has added to its 900 square foot living space a coffee table by Perriand and armchairs by Giulio Minoletti. On the wall of his bedroom hangs his most prized work: an original silk painting of a lotus and a dragonfly by Yokoyama Taikan, a master of the Nihonga style who emerged in Meiji-era Japan.

The platform at the top of the tower, under the red mosaic ceiling supported by a concrete gazebo, offers a view over the rooftops of 18th and 19th century aristocratic houses; the Martels used to organize cocktails on the rooftop terrace, attended by many of their fellow artists. In good weather, Touchaleaume sits with a glass of rosé on his own second-floor terrace, exchanging shouted greetings with other residents of rue Mallet-Stevens. There is a camaraderie between them that defies the quiet chic of the neighborhood – residing on rue Mallet-Stevens is a bold statement, even today. “I live in a slice of history,” said Touchaleaume. “It makes me happy to know that he will be protected long after I am gone.”

Photo assistant: Lilly Merck


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