looking at the art deco-style starting in France and really evolving the first quarter of the 20th century and culminating in 1925 with an exhibition in Paris now if we think about the other style that we looked at from that roughly the first 10 to 15 years of the 20th century it was Art Nouveau and certainly from about 1895 to about 1910 the Art Nouveau style was going quite strong and we can see just kind of in this one piece by guimard how the idea of the bosomed Quinn stove our core total work of art was really central to this style the idea that the entire space the architecture and the furniture and even all of the small decorative elements and an interior would have been designed all of a piece but this being all of a piece had its drawbacks it meant that the style was either embraced completely or rejected completely and as it starts to go out of fashion in part because of that quality another style starts to come in its place and where the Art Nouveau completely rejects sort of a historical background and really is is drawing from the inspiration from nature and the desire to create a fully new vocabulary and design the the style that that moves up into its place is actually based a great deal on classicism the other force that we see in design is the German interest in improving industrial design in their country the idea of really creating kind of standards and taking a good look at how they could improve what was being mass-produced this isn't something that France really embraces full-heartedly they're far more interested in improving what they'd had in the past that sort of central place that central role in high style in luxury goods production and what the Germans are doing is so much more about mass-production that although they're unnerved by the fact that the German industry is creating I'm a great deal of wealth for Germany they choose to really focus more on improving their luxury goods industry this desire to focus on their on their luxury goods production from the past and there's their central role as style leaders in in Europe and in the world leads them to kind of look backwards looking back past the entire 19th century which like England and America had been filled with many revival styles and going back to a point where they felt they had last really been style leaders the last great French style and that would have been the Empire style and so it's this late neoclassical style that ultimately informs what happens in the tens and the teens in modern design in France and so as they move away from Art Nouveau they move toward a kind of reinterpretation of classicism and what we're looking at here is an interior designed by Lewis sue in 1911 for the French fashion designer Paul quarrei taking a look at the interior itself you can find a number of elements that derive from classical design some of them we can actually correlate directly with images that we saw earlier in in this lecture series for instance the couch with its curving ends and it's curved swans neck carving it's up on a little plinth kind of setting it aside from the rest of the room not atypical of royal interiors and then we have the applied pilasters that end at the ceiling with this frieze and each of the elements we can see classical inspiration or influence but it's all been presented to us in a very almost abstract way it's just hinting at its classical origins and then using these intense colors and in fact this style is often referred to as color East this was a group of designers that were referred to as the color East the classical influence doesn't just remain within the interior but comes all the way into poor ray's designs as well and so we see that the woman in the foreground is wearing a dress not so distantly related to madame recomme who again we saw in the first lecture only here she's no longer wearing that white unpair gown now her gown is made out of these intensely colored textiles and this was actually one of poorest trademarks what's very exciting about this style is that it's absorbing all kinds of influences and we find designers really reaching out and bringing in influence from lots of different sources so as the art deco style starts to kind of solidify we see that underpinning of classicism that remains all through Art Deco but we also see influences coming in from artists from theatre from music really just about anywhere and mixing into what is ultimately a very eclectic style so it's difficult to really pin it down completely what we've got here are a series of images that relate pau-pau Ray's designs and we see in the first image woman in this very luxurious coat will the textiles that poree is using are actually being designed by Raoul Dufy whose portrait is here on the far right doofy use these kinds of wonderful rich patterns in his paintings and also worked with poree to develop textile designs to be used not just for clothing but also for the kinds of interiors that poree eventually designs another tremendous influence is seen in theatres and there was a great deal of theater and dance going on in Paris in the teens and twenties and one of the most exciting events was the arrival of the Ballet Russe the scene the valley rules comes from Russia with extraordinary dancers really enthralling new musical compositions and extremely romantic themes that are paired with extremely romantic set designs the dancers were exotic costumes designed by people like basked and we see see here the brightly colored scarf sort of flowing around the dancer and the dramatic and kind of extraordinary dance routines here kind of caught in this frozen image but then we have to imagine that these dancers were actually dancing within these amazing sets as well sort of overwhelming rich colors layers of pattern and all of this infused with ideas that were in themselves tremendous fantasies and very very exotic well this ends up really infusing itself into the art scene and into the design world and so we see for instance in the lower left-hand corner this image of the odalisque by Matisse and then the other two images here are actually interiors that are done through an atelier that Paul boray opens up now poree becomes interested in interiors in part because of his contact with the vena verge dot he goes to Vienna and actually meets with Hoffman and explores what they're doing and really is quite inspired by them and if we take a closer look at these images we can actually see some of the influence of Hoffman and Davina verge dot on the interiors that poree designs so we've got a lot of contrast of black and white a lot of black outlines kind of defining rectilinear forms and this use of this kind of dark green that's very similar to what the vena verge diet used as well we also see that poree was very interested in pattern and a layering of pattern and we can certainly see that in these two black-and-white images also of Poire a interiors now unfortunately there coloured and with purees work it really is a loss because he was really an a brilliant colorist but what we can get from this is that there's lots of pattern being included in these interiors and certainly on the wall that surrounds the door on the right hand side here you can really see that he would contrast brilliant colors sometimes with silvered walls or kind of dark darkly painted elements in the room for instance of the dark floor look at the extraordinary lamp as well again including kind of pattern that's actually quite similar to what he's got in his textile designs and then on the left-hand side of the screen we can see this kind of daybed and he loved to include these sort of day but it's a very romantic kind of exotic quality maybe harkening back to that orientalist kind of ideal of the turkish corner or the or the moorish smoking-room he wasn't the only fashion designer to think a law about interiors some fashion designers worked hand in hand with interior designers in order to create extraordinary spaces and among them is John Levine she was again very important fashion designer in Paris and she also put her hand to designing some very extraordinary textiles and she works with rehto in the design of her own personal apartments and what we have here is one part of the interior and you can see this a wonderful embroidered textile that's been used on the walls themselves and then for all of the upholstery and the bedding it continues throughout kind of tying the room together but what recto does is he mixes this textile and some sort of references to classicism along with a kind of fantasy ancient design that he creates and he actually was fascinated with ancient Greek metalwork and he sort of takes the influence ancient Greek metalwork and runs with it creating almost a vocabulary of his own kind of recreating an ancient world and we can see that in the low coffee table in front of the fireplace with these beautifully stylized birds all cast in bronze and then we have tor Shay's on either side of the fireplace also from this series please note that in the foreground there's a small low stool that actually reflects an interest in African furniture design so there was no problem seeing in taking all of these different elements and mixing them into one space really creating a very kind of comfortable collect assist and an ability to chicon showcase all of these different influences this continues in the other half of this suite of rooms where we see the boudoir for madam Liu Naveen and we can see again classical elements here we've got the gilt columns on either side of the broad opening between the two rooms and then all of the kind of detail in in gold around the space very often what we see in the Art Deco is a kind of shifting and scale so while we know that it is classical and inspiration sometimes we find it a little bit difficult to pick it all out because it's been made much larger or much smaller in the ensuite bathroom we see this classical theme being continued with this bathtub carved from a single piece of marble and the inclusion of more of these pieces that are cast in bronze that reflect a kind of reinterpretation of ancient style what's really interesting is to see how closely some of what's going on in the nineteen teens and 20s reflects what had happened a hundred years prior and so for instance in this image we can really see the relationship between the dressing-table by Jacob frères from nine 1819 and the dressing-table by retro from 1920 both of them quite extraordinary both of them interpreting classicism in their own very particular ways but the forms themselves remain quite similar now for the early years of the 20th century France is really interested in putting on another one of these wonderful international great exhibitions because of course they're quite successful and a perfect way for them to showcase the kind of new design that they've been working on problem is that we have the First World War so from 1914 to 1919 clearly nothing like that is going to take place and then in 1919 when the war finally comes to an end most European countries not to mention the rest of the world are really reeling from what had taken place economically physically they're not able to produce enough to be able to feel confident putting their goods on exhibition and even France is of course suffering economically so it's not until 1925 that the time is really ripe for such an exhibition it's a little bit late in fact for the art deco-style not that it isn't still in fashion but it's sort of at that peak you know like a ripe piece of fruit it's just about to go off and move into something else wonderful for us is that the 1925 exhibition does give a very fine record of the sort of height of Art Deco fashion in France the other thing to take note of is that America does not participate in this exhibition they don't feel themselves quite modern enough to participate and if we look at the title of the exhibition we can see that modern was really central to the idea of this exposition so it's the exposition internationale des arts deco Latif's at industrials models modern industrial modern design and decorative design years later in the 1960s when exhibitions and museums are put on looking back at this moment in time and at the kind of style that developed in France during the teens the teens and 20s curators shortened that title and actually that is where we get the name Art Deco from it is a shortening of arts deco Latif's for the French at this time they called it less steel mall down the modern style and again with that idea of kind of drawing from all different sources we see modern exploration in poured concrete structures here being used in the frame for this gate and also an incorporation of modern movements and painting the tapestry that hangs announcing the Faire at this particular gate is actually highly influenced by cubism the Eiffel Tower once again plays a central role in the exhibition grounds and is used once more as a beacon and we see it here fully lit by Electric Light what's interesting is that when you take a closer look at this you can actually see the word Sitwell spelled out in the electric lights on the tower and that is of course the great car manufacturer from France the Citroen so it's actually being used also as a way to advertise their interest in automobile design the image on the left is by Robert Delaunay a very successful cubist painter who painted a whole series of images of the Eiffel Tower so the Eiffel Tower remains a kind of central interest to the avant-garde still symbolizing that moving forward the kind of optimistic future and a kind of engineering success shifts in the urban fabric and here we see these concrete trees by Mele Stephens an important modern architect he's also kind of exploring cubism but he's doing its report concrete I'm creating kind of a forest of these trees and at the base of the tree we see Sonya de Lune a along with a friend and she is wearing a dress that she has designed and the textiles that she has designed which are based on her paintings which are like her husband's very cubistic and so we can see here on the left an example of Sonia deluna's painting and we can really assume that a lot of the colors that we see in her painting palette would have also been part of her textile designs I mean here we actually see one of her designs for clothing so she's taking cubism and really directly working to bring it into the world of fashion and design and even into the world of the automobile Cytron commissions from her a car I mean she designs the exterior of this car kind of extraordinary when we think back only about 15 years as cubism came into the world it was shocking and people found it difficult even to approach these paintings and yet Picasso's work is by this time quite accepted and even becomes part of the kind of mainstream of fashion well this is something that actually speeds up over the course of the 20th century this kind of continuous looking at the most avant-garde to inform fashion and in fact once it's seen as being a successful relationship it gets pushed more and more quickly companies are interested in creating more consumerism and being on the cutting edge encourages people to purchase their designs the way that the fair was organized was that it was a tremendous series of pavilions and many of the most important French manufacturers had their own pavilions where they showed their work and all of the major French department stores had pavilions as well by the 1920s the department stores had established not only full-service interior decorating divisions but inside of those divisions they also hired designers to design exclusive furniture and decorative arts if you were to go for instance to Bon Marche and go into their decorating department you would see their selection of furnishings that you would not be able to find in any other store they also were able in this way to control the quality of what they were selling and very often what we see is really very high quality and that's one of the things that really marks the Art Deco in France is that the quality is extraordinary they've really managed in many ways to bring back that kind of position that they had in the 18th century of being the purveyors of the very finest examples of their style what we're looking at here is one of the boulevards come in the exhibition and we're looking at three of the four pavilions that represented the department stores in terms of home furnishings and you can see they all have this kind of stepped quality to them almost as tech kind of stepped roofline and we can certainly see that here in the bon marché pavilion notice over the door this large art glass or stained glass element it has a very kind of geometric quality to it and this is something that we see over and over again in the Art Deco are these fractured geometric forms or repeated arches repeated horizontal lines it's part of the kind of motifs that are developed in the Art Deco style and they're applied on all different kinds of surfaces so you could just as easily see it for instance in this window above the door to the entryway as you could on a textile and a woman's dress here we've got the pavilion from Primavera and we can see a little nod to classicism in the columns on either side of the main entryway the rest of the pavilion is really quite exotic and inspiration when we get inside though we see this nod to classicism become really quite all-encompassing we've got these massive reeded columns that kind of hold up the dome in the space and then a section of column that seems as if it were kind of cut away and used as this balcony that overlooks this double-height i-i'm space but all throughout we see these kind of oversized columns even along that kind of mezzanine level there are these really bold geometric columns and when we look at the furniture arranged on the main level we can see again references to classicism in the kind of barrow form of the sofa and a number of the accessories in the space but there are also other things happening here we've got a little bit of African influence and the small lacquered table or stool that's in the foreground there and then we see kind of the bringing in of texture to the space through the use of the wrought iron metal screen behind the sofa and then a carpet on the floor that probably comes from North Africa which is where quite a lot of carpets in French Art Deco interiors originate moving upstairs into one of the bedrooms we see again classicism very very clearly expressed in the fall front desk all the way over to the left of the image it almost relates to be temeyer it's so simplified it has this kind of broad expansive veneer but it also has this kind of stepped top that relates very well to those kind of Aztec forms that we saw in the buildings look at the arrangement of furniture we have classical inspiration in the armchair and the shays and then the two lacquered pieces are directly relating to the sculptural forms and the furniture forms that are being imported from Africa at this time here we have the pavilion for the galleries Lafayette again a kind of stylized classicism on the exterior of the building another one of these rather amazing decorative motifs above the doorway this time a sort of exploding star starburst this was a very popular motif and again seen over and over within the art deco style and coming into this building we also see references to classicism in this case the whole ground floor has readed wall so instead of the oversized columns with reading now we have entire wall treated that way the rest of the walls have a kind of faux finish on them that looks like an exotic stone but very much blown up and that again is one of those scale starts to be kind of peculiar and it creates a sort of interesting modernist to it so even in referencing the classical because it's out of scale we know that it's not actually the original classical and if we look for instance at the doorways on the second floor of this interior we can see that there are pediments being used and again some kind of reinterpretations of columns moving into a bedroom in this pavilion we see an interior by Maurice Dufresne and here we can see some of the luxury that the French Art Deco comes to be known for we have this amazing undulating wall behind the bed that has been completely guilt and then the bed itself and actually all of the furniture in the space is veneered was the the most beautiful burled wood exotic and terribly expensive all of the upholstery is naturally silk velvet the carpets are pure white and then area rugs three of them in fact because one polar bear wasn't enough we actually needed to have three of them really to show the level of luxury and one of the sort of indicators of this luxury was the use of exotic material so we see a lot of this kind of fur being used a lot of silk Velvets and certainly a lot of very exotic and expensive woods now some of this was actually coming from the colonies that France held and France like all other countries in Europe that held colonies during the first part of the 20th century really kind of minds their colonial holdings for decorative motifs and they really feel that these colonies are a part of who they are and integrate very readily the kind of decorative arts that those countries produce into their Art Deco styles many of France's connections were to North Africa so we see for instance lots of influence coming from places like Algiers the other influences coming from Europe were most strongly coming from the Viennese tradition and we see that very much in the work of Paul poree he continues this relationship with Divina virtute and in his pavilions which were in fact on barges in the Sun he actually uses his own designs very strongly combined at times with the veena version at one of the barges was in fact a cafe and the exterior of this barge had a series of plants in planters and you can see these kind of shrubs going up the staircase and if we look at the boxes themselves that the shrubs are planted and you can see that kind of dark line going around and really creating a strong kind of geometric feeling that we could relate directly back to the veena Burke start looking at this interior where he's showing his textiles and his interior design Atelier we can see in the foreground a chair that also comes very close to the clients of furniture that Hoffman designed for the veena workshop it has that kind of very strong rectilinear quality to it and in fact the sides are pierced squares so it has a kind of lattice work on this on all three sides of the chair the upholsteries that Poirier uses are very exotic again but now they've moved away from some of that kind of layering of pattern that we saw in the earlier interiors and now he's drawing from more sort of jungle motifs and the exotic ism that actually comes as an influence from those French held colonies in Africa he maintains the kind of daybed at the back of the space and then to the right of this interior we can see a metalwork partial wall that actually has the crossed arrows that would have been very comfortable in an interior from the empire style even the dressing table is Retd very much like those interiors that we saw in the department store pavilions again referencing columns and classicism and all of this sitting quite comfortably together in one interior another motif that was very popular in the Art Deco were fountains and we see lots and lots of interpretations of fountains the force of natural energy the kind of beautiful flow the arc of water the spray all of that is something that we see over and over again and in fact anything that has movement and energy was really appealing for motifs and on the right hand side we have this repeat of a fountain combined with a very kind of abstracted and Geo Metro sized interpretation of flowers and so here on the left hand side we've got an interior and you can see just sort of generally in this interior that there's a lot of classicism being interpreted when we get a little bit closer to the wall you can see that they're actually using a wallpaper with a pattern not too dissimilar from the one from the example that we have here and in fact we see this type of waterfall motif again and again in the exhibition in 1925 we see it here in this screen by Edgar Brandt Edgar Brandt was an extraordinary artisan working with both base metals like wrought iron and finer metals and one of the things that he does is he creates techniques for combining metals and that's what that gold that you see on a portion of this screen is it is actually not applied to the surface but kind of annealed into the metal which was what which was quite a feat his extraordinary abilities actually kind of elevate this kind of ace brought iron to an artistic level they kind of taken and make it a luxury item and that was one of the things that the French also become known for in this in this period is this ability to work with materials in very extraordinary ways so that they've in fact revived that tradition of the great artisan and Lalique a glass manufacturer and glass designer uses glass in equally extraordinary ways and here we see a fountain by Lalique this of course would have been fully lit at night and had different color lights inside of it so that it could kind of dance along with concerts and the water would spray in different in different manners and becomes sort of a focal point of nightlife at the exhibition he also works with a seven factors the French porcelain company to outfit the interior of their pavilion and here we see these extraordinary walls by viola leak and a ceiling as well in cast glass what's wonderful about this cast glass ceiling is it has the kind of quality of ice but never melts and then it's backlit which makes it really glow and the kind of glass that he's using for this architectural casting is the same kind of glass that he was using for the vazha switch which really became probably his most popular decorative arts object and you can see it's a very thick cast glass that has an almost kind of cloudy quality to it and it does in many ways look like frozen water ice another of the great designers was Emil Jacque Ruhlman Mills a crewman was a very fine cabinet maker and an East really in that um French tradition the exterior of the pavilion devoted to the exhibition of his designs is done in a completely classical way so that it looks really from the exterior like a temple and has lots of those classical elements that make us think that it's a temple of the columns the frieze with a low kind of classically inspired relief even the statue of the three muses at this quaint abode and of the building all reference classical design moving into the interior we see these wonderful soaring spaces that also rely a good deal on classical design but bring in all kinds of eclectic as well Ruhlman's designs for furniture tend to be very geometric and really rely a great deal on their classical inspiration they're simple and yet all of the elements are extraordinarily well defined so that each piece although it may only be made of one type of wood the wood itself is extraordinary and the way in which the pieces of wood are joined is extraordinary yet in the whole room we see quite an awful lot going on so these simple pieces of furniture sit in spaces with walls that are covered with extraordinary wallpapers metalwork from people like Edgar Brandt as we can see in this very tall gate at the entryway to one of the rooms and if we take a closer look at this black and white image we can see for instance that the ceiling looks as if it's almost malachite that's been painted on there and yet completely over scaled it's the same with a wallpaper the wallpaper is made up of a series of urns but they're urns themselves must be 30 inches tremendous classical forms even above the fireplace we see this very large painting as well based on a classical inspiration and also very oversized it's interesting when we take a closer look at the furniture because it tends to be almost diminutive in scale when we look at this armchair you can see how extraordinarily simple it is and yet the small details really create the sense of luxury the way that the armrests just kind of spreads ever so slightly to receive the sitter's arms the way that the feet are turned and these kind of perfect avoids just to give you a sense of how rich the color could be in a room in interior this interior which is about five years later for an ambassador has this intensely colored mural again very oversized in a room that soars look at how how tall those windows are with those extraordinary drapes that are pulled back almost at the bottom giving it an surreal quality and the size of that bronze Vaz which would tower over even the tallest man and then these very classically inspired furniture forms again that are very very simple in form when we take a closer look almost all of Romans furniture is finished in very exotic ways so for instance here we have this sideboard that is in fact a work that's done by a number of people we've got do Nam who was very famous for his lacquer work who's responsible for the finish of the exterior of the piece Roman who was responsible for the overall design and then an artist by the name of Rosicky who is responsible for the actual image there we have of the donkey and the porcupine you know the way that this piece would have been made is that after the cabinetmaker had made the individual parts the piece would be lacquered and lacquering is an art that takes a tremendous amount of time to learn it requires not only years of working with a master but even just for the finishing of one individual piece it can take a great deal of time because it requires layers of Lac being applied and in between each layer it has to dry to a certain consistency be softly sanded cleaned and then another layer put on top of that now why this is important is because in the end you've got this extraordinary shiny surface but it's not as perfect and smooth as for instance chemical lacquer paint that you can that you can find today it has a kind of supple quality to it and also because it's so thick it can actually be carved into and if the lacquer artist is actually putting lighter color lacquer beneath when it's carved into the contrasting color is shown through the surface and that's exactly what we see here so that image is literally carved into the surface of the piece exposing the lighter layers of lacquer beneath what's most typical for Romans pieces of furniture are these kind of striated wood finishes very often madagascar mpany and it's a type of wood that has an almost perfect vertical striation to it and then he would use ivory for the inlay and so all of the white fields are actually ivory that's been inlaid into the wood including those little dots and those little dots are very very typical of Ruhlman's work please know also that he uses a kind of ivory dental ation at the top of the small cupboard and that the Sebo or the feet would either be in a nickel or sometimes even also in ivory there's simple forms very geometric very classical and inspiration as are the motifs yet very modern in their simplicity I'm taking a look at these two pieces again we see this kind of real classicism driving the form of the piece very much so in the dressing-table with that large urn shape at the base and then we've got that kind of late neoclassical dressing-table form that we've already seen once in the Art Deco style here again very very simplified the use of exotic materials this time combining even more materials in order to create that rather wonderful top on the dressing-table that's the kind of drawer that lifts out and what's important to remember about Romans work is that it always is the finest most expensive materials used in the most extraordinary ways and of course with do non as well the idea of using lacquer not just for pieces of furniture but for entire rooms is one that do not makes popular and here we see an interior from another Pavilion at the 1925 exhibition this one was called the home of a French ambassador and was essentially just an excuse to furnish a series of rooms which many of these pavilions were giving a variety of artists the ability to showcase their works and so here we have do games room and we've got this gaming table in the center that's all black lacquer and then the waltz themselves are lacquered and then that central panel is also lacquer work this time with a kind of carving out to reveal one color underneath the other take note to the point of stepped ceiling that you see in this image again one that's repeated over and over in art deco interiors and just to take a closer look at the art of lacquer Doonan was not satisfied with only having an extraordinary ability with the technique of lacquering he also took it another step and brought in techniques that were even more difficult like embedding eggshells and that's what we see here it is an ancient Japanese art to embed eggshells in the surface of the lacquer and kind of make them one with it so this would be quite smooth you wouldn't be able to sort of flick the eggshells off they're actually really part of the lacquer work moving into a lady's bedroom in the same pavilion of the French Embassy we see Andre groats interpretation of 18th century French designs in a very Art Deco manner so again we see how this kind of eclecticism there's drawing from lots of different sources really effects art deco design and creates a very kind of eclectic quality and he actually includes this kind of center table that has a much more classical interpretation with these far more 18th century Rococo kind of forms now in this black and white image this room looks relatively simple but when we start to take a closer look at the individual pieces of furniture we see that these wonderful kind of curving forms very feminine and very kind of sensual are in fact covered with a very exotic material in this case chagrin or sharkskin and this is actually a fish skin that is dried and then applied to the surface of the cabinet and you can see that it's been applied in a way that almost creates kind of sunburst and the discussions and draw poles are made of ivory now the thing about these pieces of furniture is that every single element is handmade not just the surfaces or the carcass of the piece but even the hinges and the locks were made individually for each piece really in a tremendous expense yet another space from this same pavilion is by Shiro and Shiro is really interesting because he's kind of bridging the Art Deco in France and those uses of exotic materials and what we saw happening in places like the Bauhaus where we're really seeing a kind of interest in geometric form basics for me like circles and squares and a kind of functional look at design really wanting to design things with a kind of universality to them as opposed to the specifics of history or place and here in this library we can see this sculptural form that kind of takes over the center of the space has all of that playing with geometry a real abstraction and then taking a closer look at the desk and chair we can see an influence of cubism in the way that the top of the desk is faceted and an interest in functionalism I'm in the way that the handles are designed and you can see that they've been designed with a vertical orientation I'm really reflecting the way that we reach and pull for things in a sense kind of playing with functionality now one of the reasons that Shero is so interesting is because he actually explores the ideas of modern architecture while still retaining some of the interest in the kind of really exquisite fine finishes pieces that are made in this French luxury tradition and he combines them and we can see that here in this Maison de verre or house of glass this building was commissioned by a couple who wanted to build in the center of Paris and so what they do is they perch an existing building not with a street front but actually in one of the back buildings and Paris has these kind of courtyards and then additional buildings behind and would their intention was that they just rip down the whole thing and the churro would build this entirely modern building what happens is that on the top floor an elderly woman refuses to move and by law and Paris they were not able to force her to leave sherow has a plan to kind of carve out the bottom of the building holding up the upper floor with steel beams while he then inserts or belts this completely modern building that's based on modern building techniques and really expresses them quite fully and so what we've got in the end is an old building with a new building inserted right into it now we can see on the facade of this building that it is a curtain wall and it is made entirely of glass brick at night the space literally glows the bottom portion of the building was used as medical offices because the husband was a doctor and when we get inside of the building we can see just how this glass wall stands proud of the structure the structure of course is all being held up with the steel beams and you can see these i-beams in the foreground and then also exposed in the interior of this double-height living room he really explores the possibilities with metal in this interior he builds the bookcase and the bookcase ladder all of metal and we can see here on the mezzanine floor that the there's kind of an enclosure that's made up of metal elements mixed with wooden elements that allows for a certain level of kind of transparency between that second floor and this large living room dining room area and those metal beams are almost glorified in the way that he treats them so that they're painted this kind of dark gray and then a brilliant orange really bringing one's eyes to them they become a central part of the aesthetic of the space yet he retains an interest in the design of rather luxurious pieces of furniture that reference classical forms in the great history of French decorative arts and we see in these two sofas and in the armchair his interest in the kind of barrel form that comes from classical design and then he's upholstered these pieces in silk velvet and tapestries that are woven in the gobloon factories in fact if we were able to move all through this apartment what you would see is that he also mixes in some antique pieces and on the opera floor in the private rooms of the family he uses metal to construct closets and really unique bathroom fixtures so although he's taking some of that kind of machine aesthetic that leads for instance the people at the Bauhaus to create designs for mass production in Sheroes hands the metal becomes part of a very kind of unique and almost luxury design while still glorifying elements of the new industrial or machine aesthetic