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a pantry and service rooms. Above its half-height ceiling, Breuer southwest corners and another in the center of the north façade —
designed a private office with wrap-around windows that allow Mr. emphasizing the sense that the roof is about to take flight.
Sayer to survey his entire estate, now grown to 175 acres. As we The large glass sheets of the façade were initially installed
drove past the carefully tended paddocks toward the house earlier without any hardware between the concrete roof and the
that day, we had seen him enthroned at his desk, his keen eye on ground. When the wind blew, however, they moved slightly back
his stables and employees at work. and forth, so Breuer created an additional support of stabilizing
Mr. Sayer proudly showed us a model of the house and a row wooden rails.
of folders in which he had neatly documented the construction The remarkable precision of the design and the attention to
phase. “Under the direction of Mario Jossa, Breuer’s Paris office detail are matched by the quality of the finishes. Anybody famil-
drew approximately 120 single plans at the time,” he said. “Every iar with 1960s and 1970s concrete buildings knows how shabby
little detail is thought through exactly. Even the doorknobs, hard- many façades look today. But time and the harsh marine climate
ware and screws are visualized in detail.” After 35 years, he is still seem to have passed by Maison Sayer without trace. The extremely
enthusiastic about the quality of this design, especially the complex bright concrete walls — the house was intended to radiate cheer
construction of the concrete roof, which was designed down to beneath the frequently cloudy Normandy sky — show no sign of
the very last detail with drawings and mathematical calculations age; their distinct surface textures stand out as clearly as ever. The
in the days before computer aided design. Thanks to the use of concrete walls of the children’s wing and those facing the garden
pre-stressed steel cables, the concrete shell roof is, for the most part, and courtyard were formed with a mold of slender wooden planks,
self-supporting; it rests on three points: massive polygonal concrete resulting in a strict horizontal linear pattern, while the connecting
pillars that stand away from the façade – at the southeast and wall between the two wings has a deeply ribbed vertical relief.
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