To dwell means to leave traces: Modernism, mastery, and meaning in the house museums of Gaudí and Le Corbusier

Abstract

This chapter explores the house museums of two colossi of modern architecture, Antoni Gaudi and Le Corbusier, with focus on, respectively, Casa Gaudi in Park Guell in Barcelona and Corbusier's beach cabin, the Cabanon, in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin on the French Riviera. The Casa Museu Gaudi was originally constructed in 1905 as a display home in the Park Guell housing the estate owned by wealthy aristocrat Eusebi Guell, a friend and patron of Gaudi's. Casa Gaudi, the three-story house which contains the museum, was designed under supervision by Francesc Berenguer, Gaudi's main collaborator, and the plans were signed by Gaudi. Beatriz Colomina has shown that the murals were an "effacement" of Gray's sexuality and genius, and were the consequence of Le Corbusier's psychosexual complexes. Colomina's scholarship has influenced a generation of architectural history scholars, as well as creating a thirst among the general public for Eileen Gray's work and its implications for modernism.