Maisons Jaoul are a celebrated pair of houses in the upmarket Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

 suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine

Neuilly-sur-Seine

Neuilly-sur-Seine is a commune in the western suburbs of Paris, France. It is located from the center of Paris.Although Neuilly is technically a suburb of Paris, it is immediately adjacent to the city and directly extends it. The area is composed of mostly wealthy, select residential...

, designed by Le Corbusier

Le Corbusier

Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, better known as Le Corbusier , was a Swiss-born French architect, designer, urbanist, writer and painter, famous for being one of the pioneers of what now is called modern architecture. He was born in Switzerland and became a French citizen in 1930...

 and built in 1954-56. The buildings were drawn in 1937 but were only built postwar for André Jaoul and his son Michel. They are among his most important post-war buildings and feature a rugged aesthestic of unpainted cast concrete "beton brut" and roughly detailed brickwork. They were for a time owned by English millionaire Lord Palumbo. They now belong to two sisters who live there with their families. The Maisons Jaoul have been protected by the French government as historical monuments since 1966, at the request of André Malraux

André Malraux

André Malraux DSO was a French adventurer, award-winning author, and statesman. Having traveled extensively in Indochina and China, Malraux was noted especially for his novel entitled La Condition Humaine , which won the Prix Goncourt...

.

The buildings are located at 83 rue de longchamp (GIS +48.879829+2.253775).

The son Michel (or Jacques Michel) Jaoul worked as an architect in Le Corbusier's office and in 1988 was in charge of the renovation of the houses. The construction of these vaulted houses signals a new trend in Le Corbusier's work, and the Maisons Jaoul can be considered his first "New Brutalist" work.

"...Shallow concrete vaults cast against a permanent framework of thin bricks set in place without the use of centering. These brick spans served as permanent molds for the shell concrete vaults cast in place on top of them. Tied with transverse steel rods, the vaults bear on continuous concrete beams that extend the length of each house at every floor. These beams in turn transfer the weight to load-bearing brick walls that enclose the houses on every side."

External links

• Maisons Privées - non-profit organization dedicated to promote and safeguard modern and contemporary private architecture.

Resources

• Frampton, Kenneth, and Roberto Schezen. 2002. Le Corbusier: architect of the twentieth century. New York: H.N. Abrams.
• Jeanneret-Gris, Charles-Édouard, Alberto Izzo, and Camillo Gubitosi. 1978. Le Corbusier: disegni = dessins = drawings. Roma: Officina Edizioni.
• Sampò, Luca, Le Maisons Jaoul di Le Corbusier. La petite maison e la città contemporanea, FrancoAngeli, Milano 2010.
• Schezen, Roberto, and Susan Doubilet. 1998. Private architecture: masterpieces of the twentieth century. [New York, N.Y.]: The Monacelli Press.