have enabled the faithful restoration of some facades and an approximation of the street’s original atmosphere.
The Villa Martel, on a 61-by-40 foot lot, housed the sculpture studio of Mallet-Stevens’s close friends, Jan and Joël Martel, twin brothers and sculptors who co-signed their works. In addition to the sculpture studio, the house contained identical apartments for each brother and his family, a smaller apartment for their widowed father and two maid’s rooms. There were three independent entrances: to the left of the garage, to the right of the sculpture studio and, in the center, a common entrance serving the apartments and the sculpture studio’s upper level. Entered at ground level from the street through an extremely tall sliding door, the studio is organized on two additional half levels below grade, the largest reserved for modeling and glazing. A mezzanine, outfitted as an office, overlooked a sitting area that could be separated from the studio by a blue plastic curtain. The different floor levels generate a similar fragmentation in the interior and exterior spaces on the upper levels; the two apartments on the second and third floors as well as the father’s apartment and maid’s rooms on the fourth, are all laid out on half levels.

On the exterior, a cylindrical stair tower organizes and dominates the building’s composition. The only strong vertical element, it is reinforced by a stained glass panel, designed by Louis Barillet, that runs its entire height. A large terrace, surfaced with black, red, gray and white mosaic, covers the roof; it provides access to a small circular terrace on the top of the stair tower. This terrace is sheltered by a wide cement crown, whose red mosaic underside is highly visible from the street. Other strong graphic elements, such as the yellow rolling shutters and the bright red or blue painted edges on architectural elements of the neighboring houses, emphasize the plastic organization of the complex. A roughly textured plaster of white granular cement unifies the exterior surfaces of the various structures. At the foot of their facades, hefty horizontal grooves in the grey cement define a three-foot-high band.

The ironwork doors and handles of the Villa Martel were designed and fabricated in the workshop of architect and industrialist Jean Prouvé. The interior walls are painted a simple white to highlight the shapes of the rooms and natural light; the floors are terrazzo or sandstone tile, which are easily washed. As he often did, Mallet-Stevens called on his friends to design the furniture for the apartments: Gabriel Guévrékian designed the father’s bedroom; Francis Jourdain, the suspended sliding storage units for the living room of the third floor; and Charlotte Perriand created a “studio-bar” in one of the bedrooms.

The Villa Martel escaped degradation better than other buildings on the street because it remained, for the most part, within the Martel family until the 1980s. The sculpture studio was sold in 1999 to art aficionados, who also bought the fourth floor a few years later. Partial renovations have
connected the maid’s rooms to the small apartment, but Guévrékian’s built-in furniture is still in place. In the sculpture studio, a few colossal sculptures by Jan and Joël Martel remain; the rest of the space has been furnished by the current owners. In the second floor apartment, sold at the death of the two brothers in 1966, nothing remains of the original furniture. However, the furniture in the third floor apartment, where the widow of Joël Martel lived until her death at age 99, was still intact in 2005. Purchased recently by a Parisian gallery owner specializing in furniture of the 1950s, this apartment will become a gallery. Its furniture, removed for restoration, will be returned to its original location.

It is the enduring presence of so many original elements that conjures for the visitor a breathtaking experience of 1930s space: the terrazzo and mosaic, the sculpted detailing on plinths, the pure white surface of the walls, the great banks of windows, the rolling shutters, the door handles, the heating Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72  |  Page 73  |  Page 74  |  Page 75  |  Page 76  |  Page 77  |  Page 78  |  Page 79  |  Page 80  |  Page 81  |  Page 82  |  Page 83  |  Page 84  |  Page 85  |  Page 86  |  Page 87  |  Page 88  |  Page 89  |  Page 90  |  Page 91  |  Page 92  |  Page 93  |  Page 94  |  Page 95  |  Page 96  |  Page 97  |  Page 98  |  Page 99  |  Page 100  |  Page 101  |  Page 102  |  Page 103  |  Page 104  |  Page 105  |  Page 106  |  Page 107  |  Page 108  |  Page 109  |  Page 110  |  Page 111  |  Page 112  |  Page 113  |  Page 114  |  Page 115  |  Page 116  |  Page 117  |  Page 118  |  Page 119  |  Page 120  |  Page 121  |  Page 122  |  Page 123  |  Page 124  |  Page 125  |  Page 126  |  Page 127  |  Page 128  |  Page 129  |  Page 130  |  Page 131  |  Page 132