Paris Match: Pierre Chareau's Maison de Verre and the extraordinary Eglon House
First written for World of Interiors magazine in 2016 by our Founding Director Matt Gibberd, this article traces the inspiration and influence of Pierre Chareau’s early-modernist Maison de Verre as it was re-imagined for the 21st century, in the form of Eglon House.
A fitting introduction to the remarkable Eglon House, which we have just brought to the market.
“Nestled in a cobbled Parisian courtyard is one of the great monuments of the International Style, its familiar façade glowing like a Modernist magic lantern. It’s a breathtaking sight. Except that this isn’t Paris at all, it’s Primrose Hill. And despite masquerading as Pierre Chareau’s Maison de Verre, this extraordinary edifice has 21st century bones and an English sensibility.
“Eglon House, as it is known, was the project of a forward-thinking London property developer. The site, which is tucked away down a cobbled lane and accessed through an unassuming arch, reminded him of the backland spaces of Paris, and what began as an impulse has terminated in a heroic homage. ‘It’s about taking an architectural gem and saying: “If you were to approach the project today, how would you do it?”’
“The aesthetic relevance of the Maison de Verre is unquestionable, but to understand why someone would choose to replicate it across the Channel some 85 years after it was built, we must also consider its symbolic importance. The building was a pioneer of the modern-day live/work phenomenon, with a commercial space on the ground floor and residential accommodation above.
“It was commissioned by a gynaecologist, Dr Dalsace, and became home to Surrealist soirées in his salle de séjour, which were attended by Jean Cocteau, Joan Miró and Yves Tanguy.
“Eglon House adopts similar principles. It is divided into two distinct structures that face off across the courtyard and are linked together at basement level. One side has an industrial character, with a professional kitchen and impressive double-height gallery; the other is more domestic and takes its cues from Art Deco, with a comparatively modest kitchen-breakfast room where the morning sunlight perforates the building.
“The site has always had a commercial use. A mid-19th-century census map of the area shows a series of stables and barns, where shell casings were manufactured during World War I. Express Dairies then milked its potential by servicing its floats there, at a time when cattle were still grazed on Primrose Hill.
“In more recent years it was converted into Mayfair Recording Studios, where Tina Turner could be found roaring inside a soundproof concrete bunker. Suffice to say, the design team for Eglon House had a lot to untangle. Although the house settles into the outline of the original structure, it is an entirely new building.
“The original Maison de Verre was built under comparable constraints. Dr Dalsace and his wife had intended to carry out a full demolition of their site’s existing eighteenth-century hôtel particulier, but were unable to evict the elderly lady who lived in the apartment on the top floor. Their solution was to prop her up on steel columns and insert an entirely new structure beneath.
“The close proximity of other buildings dictated a transparent façade. The iconic glass blocks, which shatter the light like lenses, have been mimicked at Eglon House. They were cast using the original moulds by a factory in Lille. Transparency is used throughout the interior, always hinting at hidden spaces beyond.
“A blue carpet from the Maison’s master bedroom has been colour-matched in one of the rooms on the Art Deco side of the house, which evokes the grandeur of the Orient Express, with rigorously buffed curves of walnut and a burnt parquet floor the colour of tobacco.
“Elsewhere there are textiles inspired by artists of the era, including a expansive rug that elicits the geometry of a Ben Nicholson painting. The sitting room on the ground floor is furnished with copies of Chareau’s original sofas and tables, all manufactured in Britain.
“Across the other side of the courtyard, a familiar perforated-steel balustrade runs around the gallery. At one end is the dining room, with a steel bookcase, and at the other is the professional kitchen, where Lebanese cedar cupboards have been combined with a wonderfully superannuated lump of Italian marble.
“Nineteen-thirties construction methods were used to create the shuttered-concrete ceilings, which are adorned with an intricate lattice of surface-mounted services, including museum-grade bronze track lighting. Even the fire extinguishers were custom-made, patinated as if foraged from the bottom of the sea.
“The Maison de Verre has been described as an elaborate piece of furniture, reflecting Pierre Chareau’s expertise as a product designer, and this craftsman’s sensibility has carried through to Eglon House. This is a project six years in the making. British materials are much in evidence, including a basement staircase made from pitch pine and grout mixed with Portland stone.
“There are some very advanced things too. On the top floor, solar PV matting is set into the triple-glazed rooflights, so that it simultaneously reduces the glare and generates energy. In the basement, a mechanical rising floor that can be instantaneously transformed into a swimming pool enables a communal area to act as both a swimming pool and a cinema (a ‘dive-in’ rather than a drive-in). The 3m-wide LED waterproof movie screen was specially commissioned and, at the time of fabrication, was the highest-resolution example of that size ever made.
“The owner, who applies the same discernment to affordable housing as he does to a 1,200 sq m Modernist mansion, is keen to stress the value of the implausible architectural project. ‘Despite the hostility from planners, it’s important for the social fabric of London that there is an allowance for specialist projects. We need to keep contributing positive buildings.’
“Were he alive to see it, Chareau would surely doff his chapeau.”
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