At the end of the summer of 1928 Pierre and Eugénie Savoye decided to build a country house, on their land in Poissy, to go there for the weekend with their son and receive their friends. They chose an avant-garde architect, who already had a certain reputation, whose work they discovered with the Church villa in Ville-d'Avray, Charles-Edouard Jeanneret known as Le Corbusier.
New materials, notably concrete, and new construction techniques are being tested. These designs are difficult to grasp for companies still attached to traditional masonry, especially since the ambition to use materials prefabricated in the factory is ultimately impossible. Everything was cast or made on site, even the hollow cement bricks that fill the walls!
Le Corbusier not only builds a house but creates a veritable “architectural promenade”.
This is not yet another house that Le Corbusier is building with the Villa Savoye, it is THE house. It is the culmination of ten years of research and experimentation. He implements all the 5 points of a new architecture: pilotis, a long window in a band, a flat roof, a free plan, free facades.
After the declaration of the Second World War, the Savoye couple took refuge for some time in Poissy and then in May 1940 moved to the provinces. The villa was requisitioned by the Germans, who made it a strategic vantage point over the Seine valley and the Ford factories during the occupation.
At the Liberation, the American army settled there. At the end of the conflict, the house was badly damaged: broken windows, frozen radiators, damaged parquet. In 1945, when the Savoyes found their house, everything had to be redone! They decided not to embark on the work and chose two years later to transform the property into a farm with the house as a storage location. Eugénie Savoye regularly comes here to pick up fruit and vegetables.
In the 1950s, the city of Poissy was growing and had to create housing. The agricultural plateau is the ideal location also in 1958, the town of Poissy bought the Savoye property planning to build a high school there. While waiting for the realization of the project, the villa is transformed into a cultural space for young people.
Worried by the plan of the city of Poissy to raze the villa, architects mobilized and set up a committee to save it. In 1959, the Minister of Culture, André Malraux, took measures to preserve the villa, which the city sold to the State with a plot of 1 hectare. Restorations began in 1963, and in 1965, the villa was classified as a Historic Monument. Since this classification there have been two other restoration programs and research on the polychromy of the walls.
Consecration in 2016, 17 sites imagined by Le Corbusier, spread over 7 countries and 3 continents, are inscribed by UNESCO on the list of World Heritage of Humanity, including the Villa Savoye!
