The Desecration of E-1027: Eileen Gray, Le Corbusier, and the Struggle for Architectural Purity

Perched on the rocky coast of the French Riviera, Eileen Gray’s E-1027 was a revelation. A pure expression of modernist ideals, it stood in perfect harmony with its surroundings – an ode to light, space, and simplicity. Designed in the late 1920s as a retreat for Gray and her lover, the Romanian architect Jean Badovici, the villa was a radical rejection of excess. It was pristine, intimate, and deeply personal – until Le Corbusier arrived.

A Villa Unlike Any Other

E-1027 was unlike the stark, authoritarian modernism that was beginning to dominate the era. Gray, an Irish designer-turned-architect, rejected the cold, mechanical aesthetic championed by many of her male contemporaries. She believed in a humanist modernism – one that prioritized the experience of living within a space, rather than the spectacle of it.

Every detail was considered. The built-in furniture, the flowing movement between rooms, the way the house seemed to float between land and sea – all of it was meticulously designed for comfort and intimacy. Even the initials of the house’s name, E-1027, were a secret code: E for Eileen, 10 for Jean (J, the 10th letter of the alphabet), 2 for Badovici, and 7 for Gray. It was a love letter in architectural form.

And yet, it would become a battleground.

Le Corbusier’s Appropriation

Le Corbusier, the self-proclaimed master of modernism, first visited E-1027 in the 1930s. He was captivated – but not in the way one might expect. Instead of admiring Gray’s vision, he seemed resentful. Perhaps he was unsettled by the fact that a woman – an outsider to the architectural elite – had created something so extraordinary.

So, he did what only a man with unchecked arrogance would do: he put his marks on it.

Between 1938 and 1939, Le Corbusier painted a series of garish, sexualized murals on the villa’s pristine white walls – without Gray’s permission. The images were grotesque distortions of the human form, crude and aggressive in contrast to the elegance of the space.

Some claim he did it out of admiration. Others believe it was an act of dominance, a way of quite literally marking a territory on a masterpiece that he had not designed.

Le Corbusier’s act to vandalise the pristine white walls is particularly remarkable, since from the building of his parent’s house, and later models, he was not only very well aware but even an advocate of the concept and design language of white walls and the deliberate absense of decoration.

Either way, Gray was furious. She never returned to E-1027 after the war, abandoning the house she had so lovingly created.

A Legacy Stained but Not Forgotten

Le Corbusier’s obsession didn’t end there. In 1952, he built his own house – the Cabanon – just meters away from E-1027, as if to permanently impose his presence upon it. Some say it was a tribute. Others see it as the ultimate act of architectural theft.

For decades, E-1027 fell into disrepair, a forgotten relic overtaken by squatters and the elements. But in recent years, restorations have sought to erase Le Corbusier’s desecration and return the villa to Gray’s original vision.

Today, E-1027 stands not just as a monument to modernism but as a symbol of defiance – a reminder that architecture, like art, is not just about power, but about those who dare to create with authenticity, beyond the confines of convention.

For decades, people connected the property falsely with Le Corbusier because of his markings, and he evaded to clear up this misunderstanding. Le Corbusier died 1965 only a few hundred meters away, in sight of the building.

Today, it is Eileen Gray’s name, that history has come to revere.