Albert Frey at the office of Eggericx and Verwilghen, 1930. Photographer unknown. From Albert Frey, Inventive Modernist, edited by Brad Dunning, Radius Books, Palm Springs Art Museum, 2024, p. 37. Art Museum.
Much has been written about Albert Frey (1903-1998) over the years, with most of the attention being placed on his seminal work establishing Palm Springs as the "Mecca of Desert Modernism." Joseph Rosa's Albert Frey, Architect, published in 1990, was a remarkable piece of work and satisfied our modernist appetites. The recent Albert Frey: Inventive Modernist book edited by Brad Dunning and the concurrent exhibition and rededication of Frey's Aluminaire House after its relocation from the East Coast and restoration by the Palm Springs Art Museum sparked a whole new wave of interest and piqued my fascination to learn much more about his little-known formative years in Europe. What I was able to uncover completely amazed me.
Institute of Technology (Technikum), Winterthur, Switzerland, ca. 1938. (From Schweizerisches Sozialarchive).
Left: Kunstgewerbliche Arbeiten aus den Werkstätten der Gewerbeschule, Rentsch, Zurich, 1925. Right: Das Werk, Vol. 12, No. 9, September 1925, front cover.
While working for Arter, Frey began to become interested in the modern movement through exposure to architectural journals such as the Swiss Das Werk, published in Zurich, and attendance at exhibitions at the nearby Gewerbschule, a trade school established along the lines of the Bauhaus. Frey sensed that staying in Zurich was not an option since the best architectural school in Zurich was controlled by Karl Moser, and the students he produced were in high demand by local architects.
After a post-graduation sketching trip to Italy, Frey thought that he would have to emigrate to begin his career as a fledgling modernist. His first choice was France, but, at the time, it was not possible for a German-Swiss national to get a work permit there. Frey became aware of the exciting modernist developments in Belgium, so he packed his bags and left for Brussels in September 1925. (Rosa, p. 13).
Left: "Junge Kunst in Belgium, Architect Victor Bourgeoie und Gartenarchitekt L. Van der Swaelmen, Brussel/La Cite Moderne" by Hannes Meyer, Das Werk, Vol. 12, No. 9, September 1925, pp. 257-276. Right: "J.-J. Eggericx und L. Van der Swaelman, Gartenstadt-Le Logis-in Boitsfort, Brussel,", Ibid., p. 263.
After viewing Das Werk, the above 20-page article by Hannes Meyer in the special issue on the Belgian modern architecture and art scene, Frey immediately traveled to Brussels to seek employment with the young rising modernist star Victor Bourgeois. Bourgeois could not immediately put Frey to work but recommended that he try his colleagues J.-J. Eggericx and Raphael Verwilghen, who were also situated in Brussels and represented in the same article. (See above right). (Author's note: Frey may also have seen the articles in the May 1925 issue of Das Werk submitted to editor Joseph Gantner by Werner Moser and Richard Neutra, who were both then at Taliesin, apprenticing under Frank Lloyd Wright. See also my "Taliesin Class of 1924" for more on this.
Frey's timing could not have been better, as Eggericx and Verwilghen had plenty of routine construction drawing and specification work for the fledgling architect on their garden city developments, Le Logis and Floreal. They also happened to have projects on display in Paris at the 1925 International Exposition of Modern and Industrial Arts alongside Victor Bourgeois, Louis Van der Swaelmen, and other Belgian modernists. His new employers had also been editors of a well-respected monthly journal, La Cité,é for the previous six years. Victor Bourgeois's Cité Moderne was awarded the Grand Prize at the Paris Exposition, while Eggericx was awarded a medal of honor. (See above for example).
"Special Issue dedicated to the Exposition of Industrial and Modern Arts in Paris," La Cité, Vol. V, No. 7, August 1925, front cover and editorial.
Frey's timing could not have been better, as Eggericx and Verwilghen had plenty of work for the fledgling architect on their garden city developments, Le Logis and Floreal, at that time. They also happened to have projects on display in Paris at the 1925 International Exposition of Modern and Industrial Arts alongside Victor Bourgeois, Louis Van der Swaelmen, and other Belgian modernists. His new employers had also been editors of a well-respected monthly journal called La Cité for the previous six years.
At this point, I need to backtrack to the founding of La Cité to put perspective on Alert Frey's fortuitous involvement and deep embedment in the Belgian modern movement. As yet unknown to each other, Eggericx and Verwilghen were in England during World War I, separately involved in the preplanning of Belgium's reconstruction after the war, and imbued themselves in the Garden City Movement.
Left: Cambridge en Poche, Guide Pour nos amis Belges for Lilian Clarke by Jean Eggericx, Bowes & Bowes, Cambridge, 1914. Right: Garden Cities and Town Planning, Vol. V, No. 4, April 1915, front cover. (Author's note: Raphael Verwilghen published an article titled, "Un Cercle d'Etude Pour L'Examen des Problems de Reconstruction en Belgique" in the January 1916 issue.)
Eggrericx fled war-torn Belgium in 1914 and settled in the college town of Cambridge. He thoroughly studied the city and was very impressed with its architecture. He collaborated with a botany professor named Lilian Clarke to produce a small guidebook for fellow Belgians waiting out the war in Cambridge. In the book, he sketched the city's architecture and discussed the main buildings: university colleges and churches. It was, perhaps, due to the favorable review in the Cambridge Daily News that Eggericx was appointed professor of architecture at Caius College in December of 1914. (Culot, p. 57).
Left: Jean-Jules Eggericx, February 1917. Photographer unknown. From J.-J. Eggericx, Gentleman Architecte, Createur de Cites-Jardins, edited by Maurice Culot, AAM Editions, 2012, p. 54. Right: Raphael Verwilghen, 1919, Ibid., p. 62.
In February 1915, an important congress was convened in London devoted to the reconstruction of Belgium after the end of the First World War. There were over 300 Belgian participants, likely including Eggericx and Verwilghen, who had not as yet met. The proceedings of the congress were reported in detail in the April issue of Garden Cities and Town Planning. In June, Eggericx started working at the Daimler Automobile Factory in Coventry as a structural engineer, where he worked until returning to Brussels in 1919. According to his future friend and partner Raphael Verwilghen, it was here that Eggericx acquired a taste for rational, utilitarian architecture. Eggericx became completely imbued with English culture, evidenced by the fact that he married Cambridge language professor Helen Thompson on April 11, 1917. When they returned to Belgium in 1919, friends and colleagues couldn't help but notice his almost total conversion to an English gentleman.
(Culot, p. 59).
Left: Louis Van der Swaelmen, date unknown. Right: Preliminaries d'Art Civique by Louis Van der Swaelmen, Societe D'Editions, Leyde, 1916. Front cover.
Belgian landscape and architect-city planner Louis Van der Swaelmen spent the War years in Holland and was part of a study group known as the Comité Néerlando-Belge d'Art Civique, with fellow Belgians Herb Hoste, future Le Corbusier client Paul Otlet, and four Dutchmen, Hendrik Berlage, Petrus Cuypers, Evers, and Pauw, with Berlage acting as the chairman. Direct contact with Berlage provided a considerable stimulus. (Culot, p. 61).
Left: Schematic diagram of the theoretical concentric aggregation of a city and the emergence of the permanent and universal constituent elements of the notion of city. Plate published in Préliminaires d'Art Civique, Louis Van der Swaelmen, 1916. (Culot, p. 60). Right: "Organisation de la Cooperation Internationale a l'Etede de la Reconstruction less Cites Detruites ou Endommagees par la Guerre de 1914 en Belgique," Ibid.,
In 1916, Van der Swaelmen published a 300-page post-war reconstruction manual, Préliminaires d'Art Civique, in which he developed a theory of urbanism that could serve as a handbook for a future city planning philosophy. He presented a diagram of the city as a biological organism delineating the different functional elements of its "organs." (See above and also 'Nature's Offensive': The Sociobiological Theory and Practice of Louis Van der Swaelmen, by Koenraad Danneels, Journal of Landscape Architecture, 14:3, pp. 52-61).
Left: La Cité, Vol. I, No. 1, July 1919. Front cover. (Culot, p. 61). Right: Ibid., first issue masthead.
After the war ended, Van der Swaelmen and Verwilghen collaborated to found a new journal, La Cité, to trumpet their ideas of reconstruction and garden cities. In the first issue, Verwilghen opened with a three-page article outlining his vision, an excerpt of which follows.
"La Cite will broadly consider a question touching on all areas of technical, industrial, and social activity, and will strive to be the crossroads of all currents of opinion in matters of public art." (Ibid., p. 1).
Verwilghen next published "Urban Planners from Foreign Countries Support Our Efforts," a three-page piece mysteriously signed by L. C., which included,
"The considerable work and so full of interest for the future of Belgium, which under the direction of our friend Van der Swaelmen, the Dutch-Belgian Committee of Civic Art has carried out there, could not have been completed without the sympathy and generous cooperation of Dutch intellectuals and especially of the eminent architect H.-P. Berlage." (Ibid., p. 5).
Berlage sent a letter of support to the editor, which read in part,
"...it is the interest which, in a general way, presents the problem of the construction of the modern town. Without a doubt, this question is still new, - but already before the war, the ideas that relate to it had become so precise that we have an exact notion of it and can define with certainty the direction in which these ideas are developing. And if we can now speak of a happy Belgium it is because it has become the first country which will be able to realize this exact notion of the construction of the modern town." (Ibid., p. 6).
Left: "S. U. B., Manifeste de la Société des Urbanistes Belges, La Cité, Vol. I, No. 3, September 1919, pp. 37-40. Right: "What needs to be rebuilt?" La Cité, Vol. I, No. 1, July 1919, p. 7.
Verwilghen and Van der Swaelmen were among the editorial signatories of the Manifesto for the newly formed Société des Urbanistes Belges (SUB), in which they also stated the definitions of their masthead titles of Architect, Engineer, and Landscape Architect. The Manifesto read in part,
"The SUB will be both a study circle and a militant group. Access to it will be possible for architects, engineers, landscape architects, who declare that they adopt the modernist profession of faith and the general principles formulated above, who have been admitted to the ballot of their peers and who have demonstrated their urban planning abilities: either that their work has been awarded a prize, retained or acquired at one of the major international urban planning competitions: either that they have carried out characterized urban planning works or that they are authors of remarkable urban planning projects or that they have proposed excellent solutions to the problem of Housing, -or that they have presented to the judgement of their peers a considerable thesis, or the equivalent thereof, which reveals the possession of extensive urban planning knowledge and general ideas on the subject." (Ibid., p. 38).
Left: Special Issue Dedicated to the Reconstruction Exhibition, La Cité, Vol. I, No. 4-5, November-December, 1919, front cover. Right: "Exposition de la Reconstruction, La Section Belge," Ibid., Planche IX.
In addition to Belgium, the countries of France, the Netherlands, and England participated in the big exhibition in Brussels' Egmont Palace from September 19th to November 1st. La Cité dedicated a special double issue to the event. Louis Van der Swaelmen organized the Belgian exhibits and contributed a seven-page in-depth article which compared programs of major nations and summarized the breadth of destruction throughout Belgium compared to neighboring countries, and also described the planning activities of his and Berlage's wartime"Dutch-Belgian Civic Art Committee" ("Les Sectiones Etrangeres d'Urbanisme Compare (Foreign Sections of Comparative Urban Planning)," by Louis Van der Swaelmen, Ibid., pp. 69-75).
Louis Van der Swaelmen first met the 22-year-old Victor Bourgeois at this exhibition. Of their meeting, Bourgeois wrote:
"I cannot emphasize enough the importance of this meeting overseen by Senator Vinck, which gathered the reporters Vander Swaelmen, Hoste, Verwilghen, Bodson, and Puissant, The agenda included reports on land policy, urban planning, normalization, and urban aesthetics. In brief, a synthesis of what urban planning and architecture should be." (Strauven, p. 50).
"A Belgian Urban Planner: Louis Van de Swaelmen," by Andre De Ridder, La Cité, March 1920, pp. 176-184.
La Cite's publicist, Andre De Ridder, contributed an eight-page piece in the March 1920 issue chronicling the exploits of fellow editor Louis Van der Swaelmen, including his books and various reconstruction committee efforts to bring readers of the journal up-to-date on his significant efforts in planning the foundation for Belgium's reconstruction.
Left: "La Maison Idéale," by J.-J. Eggericx, La Cité, April 1920, pp. 197-204. Right: "La Maison Ideale," C. J. Kay, Architect, Ibid., Plate XXI.
In the very next issue, Verwilghen published an eight-page article by Eggericx, "La Maison Idéale," which had previously appeared in the London Daily Mail. The Daily Mail conducted an annual extravaganza, the Ideal Home Exhibition, each spring in London's Olympia Exhibition Centre. While attending a Low-Cost Housing Conference in London, Eggericx also attended the Ideal Home show and found the time to prepare his detailed article. He illustrated his text with the plans, redrawn by himself, and focused on the many time-saving devices designed into the prize-winning home by architect C. J. McKay.
"The jury was composed of architects, experts, men of aesthetics and technology. It had the wisdom to also include the precious science of a person accustomed to presiding over the destinies of a household." (The Ideal Home," J.-J. Eggericx, London Daily Mail, March 1920).
Left: "La Nouvelle Croisade, L'Effort Anglais," J.-J. Eggericx, La Cite, December 1920, pp. 27-42.
Editor Raphael Verwilghen opened the December 1920 issue of La Cite with an article entitled "Improving Popular Housing in England" which was illustrated with a "Bristol City Extension Plan" map which served as an introduction to a "travelogue given to us by the architect Eggericx...which once appeared in the [London] "Times." Eggericx's "The New Crusade" described an August "congress" tour of garden city developments in Bristol, Welwyn, Ealing, Ruislip-Northwood, Acton, Bournville, and Harebreaks Estate that he illustrated with maps and floor plans.
Through Louis Van der Swaelmen, Victor Bourgeois came into direct contact with the garden city movement in Belgium. It was also likely that through Van der Swaelmen that Bourgeois was offered a job at the Société Nationale d'Habitations et Logements a Bon Marché (National Society for Affordable Homes and Lodgings - SNHLBM) in April 1921, where he remained until October 1922. Without this initial experience, Bourgeois most likely would not have undertaken the adventure of designing the now iconic Cité Moderne.
Bourgeois witnessed the 1922 beginning of the Le Logis-Floreal garden city development by Eggericx and Vander Swaelmen, and was also keeping a close watch on the outcomes of an experimental SNHLBM building site in the La Roue neighborhood, also headed by Eggericx. In 1922, Van der Swaelmen and Bourgeois drew up the urban development plan for Cité Moderne. (Strauven, pp. 49-54).
Left: "La Maison Bourgeoise Idealle, Resultats du Conciurs pour 1922 du Daily Mail," by J. J. Eggericx, La Cite, Vol. III, No. 3, March 1922, pp. 51-58 and 2 plates.
Verwilghen again published the results for the 1922 London Daily Mail Ideal Home Competition, a ten-page article that J. J. Eggericx originally published in London. Eggericx would soon join Verwilghen on La Cité's editorial masthead and also become his architectural partner.
Left: Victor and Pierre Bourgeois, 1920. Photographer unknown. Right: Inaugural issue of 7 Arts, June 1922. (Strauven, p. 91).
Also, during the spring of 1922, the Bourgeois brothers formed the weekly newsletter 7 Arts. The highly respected avant-garde magazine took its inspiration from Le Corbusier's L'Esprit Nouveau, which began in 1920. 7 Arts would enjoy a seven-year run.
7 Arts, Vol. 1, No. 1, June 1922. Strauven, p. 91. Right: "7 Arts," Victor Bourgeois, La Cité Vol. 3, No. 7, July 1922, pp. 147-8.
The inaugural issue of the Bourgeois brothers' 7 Arts appeared on the streets of Belgium on June 22, 1922. Its manifesto-mission statement was repeated in the July issue of La Cité along with another 7 Arts article from Bourgeois entitled "Architecture" ("Architecture," Victor Bourgeois, Ibid., p. 149).
"L'Exposition d'Architecture du Palais d'Egmont," by Charles Conrardy, La Cite, Vol. III, No. 6, June 1922, pp. 123-6 and Plates XI and XII. (Not in Langmead or Kathryn Smith's Wright on Exhibit).
Charles Conrardy, the librarian for the Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels, contributed a six-page review of an exhibition organized by the International Congress of Architects at the Egmont Palace, which included "works, plans, elevations, sections, photographic views, and drawings of the Congress participants." He ended his critique with: "Frank Lloyd Wright is immortal in simple plans, in natural and calm lines, he created in a way a whole new way of building which does honor to the United States and to the world."
Left: "National Farmer's Bank, Owatonna, Minnesota, Louis Sullivan, Architecte, La Cite, July 1922, Plate I. Right: "Avery Coonley House, Riverside, Illinois, Frank Lloyd Wright, architect, Ibid., Plate IV. Not in Langmead or Kathryn Smith's Wright on Exhibit)
The July issue started with a ten-page article, "L'Architecture Americaine," also by Charles Conrardy. This article focused on the American section of the architectural exhibition at the Egmont Palace that he had reviewed the previous month. After some quite negative criticism of American architecture as a whole, he singled out Louis Sullivan and his disciple Frank Lloyd Wright for praise and included four illustrations. (Also, not in Langmead or Smith.)
Left: Ad for L'Art et la Société by H. P. Berlage, La Cité-Tekhne, Vol. III, No. 6, June 1922, p. 142. Right:
This June 1922 La Cité-Tekhne ran an ad for an H. P. Berlage book that combined his series of articles from Art et Technique, from September 1913 to February 1914. This inspired the Bourgeois brothers to establish their own publishing wing, L'Equerre, to publish Henry Van de Velde's 1916 "Formules Esthetiques d'Une Moderne" after serializing it in three consecutive issues in La Cité from February through April 1923. (See below for example.) Raphael Verwilghen soon added Bourgeois, Van de Velde, Berlage, Van Doesburg, and Le Corbusier to the list of contributors on La Cité's masthead. (Author's note: Victor Bourgeois first came into contact with Henry Van de Velde in 1920. Van de Velde was then back in Belgium from pre-war Germany. They met through an introduction from his brother Pierre, who had mutual connections at the Université Nouvelle. Pierre was also instrumental in Victor being named a professor at Van de Velde's new La Cambre in 1927, despite being only 29 years old. (Strauven, p. 30).
Left: "A Few Words of Introduction to The Formulas of a Modern Aesthetics by Henry Van de Velde," by Victor Bourgeois, La Cité, Vol. III, No. 10, February 1923, pp. 209-213 and four plates. Right: "Suite d'idees pour un conference," by Henry Van de Velde, Ibid., pp. 214-221.
Bourgeois announced at the end of his first February installment,
"The Formulas of a Modern Aesthetic by Henri van de Velde will soon be published by L'Equerre. We have obtained the favor of being able to offer our readers the first look at the most remarkable pages of this volume. Furthermore, Mr. Victor Bourgeois has authorized us to deliver to the public the study that will serve as a preface to the Writings of the master."
Formules d'une Esthetique Moderne by Henry Van de Velde, L'Equerre, Brussels, 1923, front and back covers.
The Bourgeois brothers formed their own 7 Arts publishing wing, L'Equerre, and strategically made Van de Velde's Formules d'une Esthetique Moderne their first publication.
Staatliches Bauhaus in Weimar 1919-1923, (Exhibition catalogue for Weimar State Bauhaus, 1919-1923), cover design by Herbert Beyer, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy (layout designer-coeditor), Walter Gropius (coeditor), 1923.
Left: Staatliches Bauhaus Ausstellung, 1923 Gift of Walter Gropius. Poster design by Joost Schmidt, 1923. Courtesy MOMA Archives. Right: Staatliches Bauhaus 1923. Photograph by Herbert Bayer.
One of the major early events in the modernism movement was an exhibition at the Bauhaus in the fall of 1923. Walter Gropius wrote to Mies van der Rohe on June 14, 1923, after viewing his models on display at the 'Große Berliner Ausstellung,' which opened in May. He invited him to contribute to the 'Internationale Architektur' section of the first major Bauhaus exhibition in Weimar, from August 15 to September 30, 1923. On June 21st, Mies happily agreed to contribute three models to the show. It was at this exhibition that Siegfried Giedion first met Walter Gropius, marking the beginning of a lifelong relationship. Giedion wrote one of his first reviews on this exhibition and had it published in the September 1923 issue of Das Werk, which Albert Frey may have seen. (From Mies van der Rohe, An Architect in His Time, by Dietrich Neumann, Yale University Press, New Haven, 2025, p. 78. Author's note: In 1907, Henry Van de Velde established the Grand-Ducal School of Arts and Crafts under the patronage of the Grand Duke. Van de Velde designed the school's building and was the school's first director. He stepped down during World War I due to his Belgian citizenship and suggested that architect Walter Gropius succeed him. In 1919, the School merged with the Weimar Art Academy to form the famous modernist art school, i.e., the Bauhaus.)
Left: Catalogue for the Grosse Berliner Kunstausstellung, 1923, Office Building, Mies van der Rohe, High-rise for the Chicago Tribune by W. H. Luckhardt. pp. 30-31. Right: Bauhaus Exhibition, International Architecture Section, Models of the Curvilinear Glass Skyscraper and Concrete Office Building by Mies van der Rohe to the left and Walter Gropius's Chicago Tribune Tower competition design entry. Photo from the exhibition at the Bauhaus Museum Weimar.
Siegfried Giedion met Walter Gropius for the first time at this exhibition and enjoyed an ongoing collaboration throughout the 1920s and 1930s via the CIAM congresses and other get-togethers.
Le Stand de L'Equerre-7 Arts, Salon de la Lanterne Sourde, 7 Arts, December 1923.
Victor Bourgeois first publicized the formation of L'Equerre in a December 1923 issue of 7 Arts with a photo of the stand at the Modern Architecture and Decorative Art Exhibition at the Egmont Palace. La Cité publicized the same exhibition in its December issue, leading off with two reviews. The first was a quite lengthy 20-page piece illustrated with ten plates by Hyppolite Fierens-Gevaert, the curator of the Royal Museum of Belgium.
Left: "L'Architecture et l'Art Decoratif Modernes en Belgium," by Hyppolite Fierens-Gevaert, La Cité, Vol. IV, No. 6, December 1923, pp. 93-133 and 10 plates. Right: "Urban development project for the District of Jemet by Victor Bourgeois, Ibid., plate VI.
Fierens-Gevaert began his article by comparing the states of modernism in France and Belgium and reminding readers of the historical contributions of Victor Horta and Henry Van de Velde. He included a section on new aesthetics on low-cost construction and favorably mentioned Verwilghen as "being the soul of a beautiful magazine, La Cité, and Van de Swaelmen's book Preliminaires d'Art Civique and numerous garden city layouts, including Cité Moderne, Trois-Tilleuls, and Floreal in Boitsfort, Selzaete, Kapelleveld, collaborating with architects Victor Bourgeois, J. J. Eggericx, Huib Hoste, and others. He also singled out Victor Bourgeois and J. J. Eggericx, of whom he wrote:
"Victor Bourgeois is also a clear-sighted critic and a bold director. Editor-in-chief of the weekly magazine 7 Arts, his articles on standardization, monolithic constructions, doors and windows, etc., have the air of a credo. His works illustrate this: individual houses, semi-detached or grouped by four or six, beautiful only through an intelligent distribution of volumes and the harmony of opposing forces: solids and voids. J. Eggericx, in his garden cities of Watermael and Comines, pushes severity to the point of puritanism."
Left: "The Stand of L'Equerre," Ibid., Planche VIII. Right: "Exhibition of New Spirit Belgian Arts at the Egmont Palace, Plan of the L'Equerre-7Arts Stand." by Charles Conrardy, Ibid., pp. 113-115.
In the same issue, Charles Conrardy contributed a three-page article reiterating the fine qualities of the work of Eggericx and Van der Swaelmen at Trois-Tilleuls and Kappeveld and included a plan of the architectural exhibition behind the L'Equerre-7 Arts stand.
Left: Vers Une Architecture by Le Corbusier, Cres, Paris, 1923. First edition. Right: "Vers Une Architecture," book review by Charles Comardy, La Cité, Vol. 4, No. 9, April 1924, pp. 166-173.
In April 1924, the librarian for the Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels, Charles Conrardy, contributed a seven-page book review of Le Corbusier's seminal Vers Une Architecture. Presaging that they would soon include Le Corbusier and Conrardy on the masthead as contributing editors, Verwilghen included:
"We are pleased to announce to our readers that Mr. Le Corbusier has included in a forthcoming issue of our Review some essential pages of his book. This publication will be accompanied by numerous photographs."
In December 1924, La Cité editor Verwilghen added Le Corbusier, Victor Bourgeois, H. P. Berlage, Charles Conrardy, J. J. P. Oud, Henry Van de Velde, Theo Van Doesburg, Jozef Peeters, Maurice Casteels, Andre de Ridder, Fierens-Gevaert, and others to the journal masthead as collaborators. Raphael Verwilghen published an article he had presented at the International Conference on City Planning in Amsterdam last July. "Transport According to the Regional Plan" was a sixteen-page piece illustrated with charts and diagrams of varying modes of transportation relevant to his expertise as a "civil construction engineer". He followed that with a two-pager, "The Fate of Garden Cities in England," describing a tongue-in-cheek article he had recently read in Garden Cities and Town Planning. The next month, he added the firm's draftsman, Ewaud van Tonderen, to the list of La Cité's collaborators. The following September, he would be joined in his atelier by Albert Frey.
The Belgian Pavilion at the International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts in Paris, 1925, Victor Horta, architect.
Left: Poster for the 'Internazionale delle Arti Decorative' in Monza, May to October 1925. Poster design by Giovanni Guerrini. Right: Abstract art stand at the 'Biennale delle Arti Decorative' in Monza, with chairs, a cabinet, and a table designed by Victor Bourgeois, 1925. (Strauven, p. 126.
When it was clear that the miniature garden district and the stand devoted to the artistic press were not going to be included in the 1925 Paris Exposition, Fierens-Gevaert commissioned Victor Bourgeois to design a 'Stand for Abstract Art' for the 'Internazionale delle Arti Decorative' in Monza. Bougeois collected pieces from his 7 Arts colleagues Jean-Jacques Gaillard, Karl Maes, Jozef Peeters, Pierre-Louis Floquet, and Victor Sevranckx to produce a multi-colored interior using their visual works combined with furniture of his own design. (Strauven, p. 126. See also "La participation belge a l'Exposition International des Arts Decoratifs de Monza (Italie)", 7 Arts 4, no. 3 (1 November 1925), p. 1.
Left: Belgian Modernist Architecture Since the War. Modern Garden Cities in Belgium, La Cité, August 1925, Plate V. Right: "Project of a Garden City in Belgium," unbuilt. Photo from 7 Arts Journal. Ibid., Plate II.
The Belgian contingent of modern architects at the 1925 Paris Expo held court at the "Galerie Esplanade de Invalides" as described in a map in the August 1925 issue of La Cité. A passage from Le Corbusier's Vers Une Architecture accompanied the map:
"A perfect urban cycle is only accomplished when it reaches the culmination of any complete period of urbanization: the urban landscape characterized by an Architecture. The third dimension in urbanization, architectural elevation, gives rise to the urban landscape, conditioned by the organic generating plan. "We use stone, wood, cement, glass: we make houses, palaces from them: it is construction ." My house is practical. Thank you, as thank you to the railway engineers and the Telephone Company. You have not touched my heart. But the walls rise to the sky in such an order that I am moved by them... My eyes are looking at something that states a thought. A thought that is illuminated only by prisms that have relationships between them. These prisms are such that light details them clearly... They are a mathematical creation of your mind. They are the language of architecture. (Le Corbusier)"
Left: Almanach D'Architecture Moderne, Le Corbusier, Cres Editions, Paris, 192^. From Le Corbusier, Architect of Books, Catherine De Smet, Lars Muller Publishers, Baden, 2005, p. 27. Right: Pavilion de L'Esprit Nouveau, Paris, 1925, Le Corbusier and Jeanneret, L'Architecture Vivante, Winter 1925, p. 48.
Siegfried Giedion viewed Le Corbusier's Pavilion and met him for the first time at the Paris Exposition. The encounter influenced him so much that he focused his 1928 book, Bauen in Frankreich, Bauen in Eisen, Bauen in Eisenbeton, on France, sketching the outline of a development that culminated in deep coverage in the work of Le Corbusier. ("Siegfried Giedion: A Biographical Sketch," by Sokratis Georgiadis in Building in France, Building in Iron, Building in Ferro-Concrete, by Siegfried Giedion, Getty Center, 1995, pp. 226-7).
Left: L'Art Decoratif d'Aujourd'hui, Le Corbusier, Cres, Paris, 1925. Center: La Peinture Moderne, Ozenfant and Jeanneret, Cres, Paris, 1925. Right: Urbanisme, Le Corbusier, Cres, Paris, 1925. (All in Le Corbusier et le livre, Fondation Le Corbusier, 2005, pp. 103-5)
"The Belgian Garden City in Miniature," by Victor Bourgeois, 7 Arts, Vol. 3, No. 17, February 26, 1925, p. 1.
Left: "l'Exposition de Paris," 7 Arts, Vol. 3, No. 24, April 30, 1925, p. 1. Right: "Special Issue Dedicated to the Modern City," by Victor Bourgeois, 7 Arts, Vol. IV, No. 1, October 15, 1925
Victor Bourgeois also published much coverage of the Paris Exposition in 7 Arts, including the grand prize in architecture for his Cité Moderne project in the above October 15, 1925, special issue.
Left "Projet de Cité-Jardin Belge by Les Urbanistes: Van der Swaelman, Verwilghen, Les Architectes: Bourgeois, Eggericx, Hoste, Hoeben, Pompe, Rubbers," from "L'effort moderne en Belgique" by Louis Van de Swaelman, La Cité, Vol. V, No. 7, August 1925, Planche I, pp. 124-143. Right: "Pavilion de L'Esprit Nouveau" a L'Exposition Internationale des Arts Decoratifs 1925, Le Corbusier et P. Jeanneret, L'Architecture Vivante, Winter 1925, p. 48.
A model of a Belgian garden city was also on display at the Paris Exposition, which was originally intended to be built to full scale, similar to Le Corbusier's Pavilion L'Esprit Nouveau. But the powers that be ruled that no trees could be destroyed. That is likely why so many trees are evident in the Belgian architects' maquette seen above. Le Corbusier resolved that issue by creatively incorporating his intrusive tree into his design. (See above right).
Left: "Maquette d'un des pavilions projetes, Architecte: J.-J. Eggericx, (Bruxelles), Ibid., Planche III. Right: Maquette du Stand de la Societe des Urbanistes et Architectes Modernistes - Ce stand est realiste et see trouve dans un des Halls de l'Esplanade des Invalides," Ibid., Planche IV.
"Another aborted project, planned by a group of architects and urban planners who had already built garden cities, and composed of Van der Swaelmen, Verwilghen, Bourgeois, Eggericx, Hoste, Hoeben, Pompe, and Rubbers, to build a mini garden city on the Esplanade des Invalides composed of six low-cost houses. The constraint of trees spaced less than 5 meters apart in all directions and the obligation to build with lightweight, exhibition-grade materials limited the project, according to an article from the time, to an architectural event showing that in Belgium, too, as in certain other European countries, the beginnings of a sui generis contemporary domestic architecture linked to the current major international trend toward volume architecture were being revealed.¹ Lacking the support of the building and furniture industries, the project never saw the light of day
Ultimately, Eggericx's participation was limited to a few panels presented in the section of the Belgian Society of Modernist Urban Planners and Architects in the Architecture Gallery located on the Esplanade des Invalides. The panels are composed of photographs and drawings enhanced with gouache and present different aspects of garden cities and low-cost houses, the outline of the facade for Claire Petrucci's house, and the preliminary design of the children's home in Bredene-sur-Mer." (Culot, p. 188).
Left: Projeta de maisons economiques, section Belge a l'Exposirion Internationale de Paris, 1925, perspectives reehaussees a la gouache. (From J.-J. Eggericx, Gentleman Architecte, Createur de Cites-Jardins edited by Maurice Culot, AAM Editions, 2012, p. 8). Right: Home des Enfants du Hainaut, Bredene, 1925, axonometrie et facades. (Culot, p. 166).
One of the big projects then on the drawing boards of Eggericx & Verwilghen was the Home de Enfants du Hainaut in Bredene, which began in 1925. Preliminary renderings were included in the Paris Expo, and construction began soon after Frey arrived in Brussels. He contributed to the legions of construction drawings and details that were necessary.
Left: "Le Home des Enfants du Hainaut A-Breedene-Sur-Mer, Architecte: J. J. Eggericx. La Cite, Vol. VI, No. 3, October 1926, pp. 33-36 and 6 plates. Right: "Le Home des Enfants du Hainaut" children's dormitories." Culot, p. 170.
The project was completed in 1926 and appeared in La Cité in the October issue. It included numerous elements which would prove useful to Frey in his work on Le Corbusier's Arsile Flottant, which will be described later below.
Left: "Architecture en Belgique," Rear Facade of the Villa Vanden Perre, Uccle 1925-6, J. J. Eggericx, architecte, La Cité, Vol.VII, No. 5, October 1928, pp. 68. Right: Villa de Robert Vanden Perre, Uccle, rendering by Ewaud van Tonderen. From Culot, p. 83.
Eggericx began designing the Villa de Robert Vanden Perre right as Albert Frey entered his atelier in the fall of 1925. The eaves contained elements of Frank Lloyd Wright, and the rear facade was basically ornament-free with clean modern lines. Albert Frey's atelier-mate Ewaud van Tonderen produced the above-right 1925 rendering. Eggericx did not publish anything on the house until his October 1928 article in La Cité, for which the editor praised his clean design with,
"This facade, where one finds neither ornamentation, nor brick projections, nor play of volumes, no eccentricity of lines, no search for amusing or bizarre effects, is pure architecture."
Left: "Numero Special Consacre a la Cité Moderne, 7 Arts, Vol. IV, No. 1, October 18, 1925, p. 1. Right: La Cité Moderne, Berhem-Sainte-Agathe, Brussels, 1922-25, Victor Bourgeois, architect. Photo by Duquenne. (Rassegna 34, p. 46)
Bauen, Der Neue Wohnbau by Bruno Taut, Klinkhardt Biermann, Berlin,1927. Dust jacket illustrating Victor Bourgeois's Cité Moderne.
The same month Albert Frey began working with Eggericx & Verwilghen, Victor Bourgeois published a special issue of 7 Arts dedicated to the Cité Moderne, which included the same photo on the cover that Hannes Meyer had included in Das Werk the previous month. The iconic photo also later appeared on the dust jacket cover of Bruno Taut's Bauen, der Neue Wohnbau, among numerous other publications.
Announcement of Victor Bourgeois Lecture, "Le Beau par l'Utile," (Beauty through Usefulness), December 1925. From "L'ideologia del modernismo belga dopo l'Art Nouveau," by Francis Strauven in L'architettura in Belgio, 34 Rassegna, Milan, 1979, p. 6.
Near the end of 1925, La Cité included the third of a four-part series on the 1925 Paris Exposition, a ten-page article by Charles Conrardy. It also announced a lecture series featuring Victor Bourgeois and Louis Van der Swaelmen at Victor Horta's Maison du Peuple in Brussels, which Albert Frey almost certainly would have attended.
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Left: Maison du Peuple, Brussels, Victor Horta, architect, 1899. Right: Belgian Workers' Party Auditorium inside the Maison du Peuple.
Maison Pettrucci-Wolfers, Brussels, 1925-6, J.-J. Eggericx, architect, displayed in the 1925 Paris Exposition. (Van Loo and Matteoni, Rassegna 34, p. 75).
Another important project in the Eggericx atelier on Albert Frey's arrival was the Maison Pettruci-Wolfers. A rendering for the project completed in January 1925 by Ewaud van Tonderen was displayed at the 1925 Paris Exposition and won a prize for Eggericx. A dispute with a neighbor on the aesthetics of the project caused a delay in construction until Eggericx commissioned Victor Horta to mediate facade details in March 1926. Since this was after Fey began work with Eggericx, he may have been involved in the preparation of construction drawings and detailing. (Culot, p. 147).
Left: Rendering and front elevation of the Verwee-Lefebure Building, Brussels, November 1925, J.-J. Eggericx, architect. (Culot, p. 171). Right: Ibid., p. 159.
"Belvedere" Bricques ad, Rendering of Fer a Cheval by J.-J. Eggericx, La Cité, Vol. VI, No. 5, January 1927, p. 57.
Eggericx put Albert Frey to work on construction drawings and details for his Fer a Cheval project in Watermael-Boitsfort sometime in 1926. This project was published in much more detail in La Cité in 1930, as seen later below. The project rendering seen in the above January 1927 La Cité Belvedere Bricques ad was again drawn by Frey's atelier-mate Ewaud van Tonderen. Frey returned to Zurich the following month to work and save money for his fateful period in the atelier of Le Corbusier in Paris. (Rosa, p. 14).
"Modern Propaganda," Slide Lecture by Victor Bourgeois at the University of Liege, Mines Exploitation Room, 5:00 p.m., March 12, 1926, 7 Arts, No. 20, February 28, 1926, p. 1. Also on March 10th at the British Tavern, 8:30 p.m., Conference on Modern Architecture sponsored by the Western Renaissance, Ibid. From 7 Arts (1922-1928) by Ronny Van de Velde, Colophon, 2017, p. 43.
In late February 1926, 7 Arts announced on the front page a slide lecture by Victor Bourgeois on the lessons of the International Exhibition of Modern and Decorative and Industrial Arts in Paris, organized by the Cercle des étudiants & Proscenium with the assistance of the Anthologie Group. Also mentioned was a March 10th Collective Conference on Modern Architecture at the British Tavern featuring work by Victor Bourgeois, Raphael Verwilgen, and Louis Van de Swaelmen. Again, Frey would almost certainly have been in attendance.
Left: Announcement for two lectures of Le Corbusier in Brussels on 4 and 5 May 1926. (Strauven, p. 129). Right: "Pensee," by Le Corbusier, La Cité, Vol. VI, No. 3, September 1926, p. 38.
The Bourgeois brothers invited Le Corbusier to Brussels to give two lectures in early May 1926. The first was a slide lecture on his Plan Voisin of Paris, which La Lantern Sourde organized at the Institut des Hautes Etudes (Université Nouvelle). Victor Bougeois was one of the founders of the Lanterne Sourde in 1923. Since he was also listed as one of the editorial collaborators of Verwilghen's La Cité since December of 1924, it seems almost certain that Verwilghen's employee, Albert Frey, was also in attendance, as was Jean Canneel-Claes, future 1929 Le Corbusier client for an unbuilt house in Brussels and future 1929-30 J. J. Eggericx student at La Cambre. Attendance at these lectures would have cemented in Frey's mind his desire to eventually move to Paris to study at the feet of the master. ("Belgian Modernism: Themes and Projects," edited by Anne van Loo and Dano Matteoni. From 34 Rassegna, Architecture in Belgium, 1920-1940, Milan, 1979, p. 76. Between Garden and City: Jean Canneel-Claes and Landscape Modernism, Dorothee Imbert, University of Pittsburgh Press, 2009, p. 30).
An excerpt from "Architecture III, Pure Creation of the Mind," of Le Corbusier's book Vers Une Architecture, was reprinted in La Cité in September, entitled "Thought." It read,
"We put stone, wood, cement into work; we make houses, palaces; it's work. But, suddenly, you make me feel good, I'm happy, I say: it's here. My house is practical. Thank you, like thank you to the railway engineers and the Telephone Company. You haven't touched my heart. But the walls rise to the sky in such an order that I am moved. I feel your intentions. You were gentle, brutal, charming, or dignified. Your stones tell me. You attach me to this place and my eyes look. My eyes look at something that states a thought. A thought that is illuminated by prisms that have between them are such that the light details them. It has nothing to do with anything necessarily practical, a mathematical creation of your mind. They are the language of architecture. With raw materials, utilitarian that you overflow, you are moved. That is architecture." (See above right).
Albert Frey would most likely have read this excerpt just a few months after hearing Le Corbusier's Plan Voison de Paris lecture in Brussels, which undoubtedly reinforced his dream to apprentice with the master.
"Concours, Societe des Nations," La Cite-Tekhne, Vol. VI, No. 6, July 1926, p. 9.
A design competition for a Palace for the League of Nations in Geneva was announced in the July 1926 issue of La Cité. The site on the shores of Lake Geneva in Switzerland was described in glowing terms, and the requirements for the project were outlined. A sum of 165,000 Swiss francs is made available to the Jury to be distributed among the best projects presented. The prize money was broken down as follows: "First prize, 30,000 francs; 2nd prize: 25,000 francs and 23,000 francs; 3rd prize: 20,000 francs; 4th and 5th prizes: 15,000 francs; 6th and 7th prizes: 5,000. 25,000 francs will be distributed in mentions."
The December issue of La Cite contained an update on the Geneva Palace of the League of Nations design competition reporting on a field trip to the site organized by the Société Centrale d'Architecture de Belgique and the reprinting of a letter of protest by Bruno Taut complaining about the short amount of time allowed before the entries were due in late January of 1927.
At his November lecture in Zurich, Corbusier recruited two of Karl Moser's students, Ernest Schindler and Walter Schaad, to join his League of Nations team in Paris, which he would establish in December. Two more Moser students, Hans Neisse and J. J. Dupasquier, and Zvonimir Kavuric from Yugoslavia, joined the team in late December and were followed by Alfred Roth on January 5th. Roth was already in Paris when he was accepted to study art at the Bauhaus, but he chose to remain with Le Corbusier. ("Corbusier's Lectures in Zurich," Das Werk, December 1926, p. XXX, and "Der Wettwerb, die Projektbearbeitung und Le Corbusier Kamps um sein preisgekrontes Projekt," by Alfred Roth in Le Corbusier & Pierre Jeanneret das Wetttbewerbsptojekt fur den Volkerbundpalast in Genf, 1927, by Werner Oechslin, Amman Verlag, Zurich, 1988.
Le Corbusier convinced his mother to attend his two lectures in Zurich, and after his return to Paris, he wrote,
"You may not imagine how happy I was to be with you in Zurich and of course I was so happy that my second lecture went off well and you had nothing to blush for. I was very touched by the testimonials of respect and sympathy that you provoked. Your attitude and your lovely expression of Corbusier's old mother made respect flourish all around you." (Letter to mother, November 29, 1926, Paris. Weber, p. 244).
In connection with Corbusier's November 1926 lectures, Joseph Gantner took the opportunity to republish the December 1926 issue of Das Neue Frankfurt's article on Corbusier's Pessac project. Frey had just missed viewing in person the November 24th lecture at the Zurich Institute of Engineers on the Plan Voisin and the 25th at the Zurich branch of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, which turned out to be a three-hour tour de force "on the rationalist and radical elements of architecture that Corbusier writes about in his books." ("Die Neuen Wohnviertel Fruges en Pessac (Bordeaux)," Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret, architecten, Das Neue Frankfurt, Vol. 13, No. 12, December 1926, pp. 30-32. Author's note: Siegfried Giedion published an article in the February 1927 issue of Der Cicerone in Berlin (see below) that featured ten pages of Le Corbusier's work, mostly on Pessac.)
Bauhaus No. 1, December 1926.
Walter Gropius published the inaugural number of his new Bauhaus journal in Dessau in December 1926. The newsletter continued to be published quarterly until late 1931. The newsletter made Bauhaus life seem so appealing that Alfred Roth, a former Swiss architecture student of Karl Moser, then working in his Zurich atelier, immediately submitted an application to study art. In the meantime, Moser informed Roth that he had no more work and advised him to join Le Corbusier in Paris to work on his League of Nations design entry. Shortly after arriving in Paris, Roth's Bauhaus application was accepted, and he was then faced with a tough choice: either remain with Le Corbusier's League of Nations design team or go to Dessau to study painting. He chose the former. (Roth, p. 21).
League of Nations competition team, January 24, 1927; from left to right: Ernest Schindler, Hans Niesse, Walter Schaad, Alfred Roth, J. J. Dupasquier, Zvonimir Kavuric, Pierre Jeanneret, Le Corbusier. From "Der Wettwerb, die Projektbearbeitung und Le Corbusiers Kampf um sein preisgekrontes Projekt," by Alfred Roth, p. 20, in Le Corbusier & Pierre Jeanneret das Wetttbewerbsptojekt fur den Volkerbundpalast in Genf, 1927, by Werner Oechslin, Amman Verlag, Zurich, 1988).
S.d.N. 14, Axonometric view from the lake, January 1927. (Oeschlin, p. 46).
Le Corbusier was making an earnest effort to win the competition by assembling a design team of recent architecture students, mainly former students of Karl Moser from his home country of Switzerland. Moser was, coincidentally, also one of the competition's jury members. While in Zurich in late November on a brief lecture tour, Le Corbusier made an impassioned plea to Moser, seeking any former students who would be willing to take part in the design. Besides current employee Alfred Roth, Moser was able to round up former students, Hans Neisse, Ernst Schindler, Walter Scaad, and J. J. DuPasquier, who all reported for duty in Paris from mid-to late December. The group burned plenty of midnight oil to barely meet the design deadline of January 25th. The only compensation the team received for their heroic duty was train fare for the journey home and two warmly inscribed copies of Vers Une Architecture and L'Art Decoratif d'Aujourd'hui. (From Begegnung mit Pionieren by Alfred Roth, Birkhauser, Basel, 1972, p. 25 and Oeschlin, p. 20).
Left: Vers Une Architecture, Editions Cres, Paris, 1923. Right: L'Art Decoratif D'Aujourd'hui, Editions Cres, Paris, 1925.
Left: Kommende Baukunst (Vers Une Architecture), by Le Corbusier, Deutsche Verlags Anstalt, Stuttgart, 1926. Right: Ad for Kommende Baukunst by Le Corbusier in Cicerone, Vol. XIX, No. 14, August 1927, p. VI. (Author's note: Siegfried Gideon was named architectural editor for Cicerone in January 1927 based on his series of three articles starting in January through April, which were excerpts of his upcoming Frankreich book published in June 1928.)
Left: Maison Guiette, Antwerp, 1926-27, Le Corbisier, Architect. Photo by Maury from Fondation Le Corbusier.
Later that year, in nearby Antwerp, Le Corbusier designed a house-studio for artist René Guiette, who had seen his Pavilion de l'Esprit Nouveau at the Paris Exposition the previous year. Since the house was not completed until mid-1927, it is unlikely that Albert Frey was able to view it before moving back to Switzerland in February 1927. He did, however, most likely see, and perhaps participate in some manner, in the design and construction of Eggericx's Villa L'Escale in La Panne on the Belgian Coast in 1926. (See above right).
"Die Neuen Wohnviertel Fruges in Pessac (Bourdeaux)," Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret, Architects, Paris, Das Werk, Vol. XIV, No. 2, February 1927, pp. 57-58.
Albert Frey opened up the February issue of Das Werk in his first month back in Zurich and was taunted by an article on his idol's development of low-cost homes in Pessac near Bordeaux. The article led off with an expression of thanks to readers who had responded positively to the magazine's December plea for the appointment of Le Corbusier to a position at the Technical University of Zurich in anticipation of the looming retirement of the beloved Karl Moser.
"Zur Situation der Franzosischen Architektur II," by Siegfried Giedion, Der Cicerone, Vol. XIX, No. 4, February 1927, pp. 174-189.
While working for Eggericx and Verwilghen for over a year and a half, Albert Frey had time to become absorbed in Corbusier's writings and philosophy. He was convinced that he must find his way to Paris. But first, he needed to move back with his family in Zurich to build a nest egg he knew he would need for survival during his unpaid Le Corbusier apprenticeship. In February of 1927, Frey began working for the Zurich firm of Leuenberger & Fluckiger, where he again did detailing and construction drawings of traditional cooperative housing, but considered it only a brief detour on his journey to Paris. (Rosa, p. 14).
"Mechanisierung und Typsierung des Serienbaues" and "De Zementblock-Bauweise von Frank Lloyd Wright," Das Werk, Vol. XIV, Issue No. 2, February 1927, pp. XXIII-XIV. Not in Langmead. (See also Wie Baut Amerika? by Richard Neutra, Die Baubucher, Band 1, Julius Hoffmann, Stuttgart, 1927, pp. 60-61. Not in Langmead.
During Frey's first month back in Zurich, the Swiss Das Werk also published an excerpt from Richard Neutra's Wie Baut Amerika regarding the cement block houses of Frank Lloyd Wright. The article was illustrated with construction photos of Wright's 1924 Storer House in Los Angeles. Kameki Tsuchiura, a Frank Lloyd Wright atelier-mate with Richard Neutra, took the images in 1924. (See more at my "Taliesin Class of 1924, A Case Study in Publicity and Fame")
Left: Machine-Age Exposition catalogue, organized by Jane Heap, New York, 1927. Right: Poster for Machine-Age Exposition, 119 W. Fifty-Seventh Street, New York City, May 16 to May 28, 1927.
"The experiment of an exposition bringing together the plastic works of these two types of artist has in it the possibility of forecasting the life of tomorrow. All of the most energetic artists, both here and in Europe: painters, sculptors, poets, magicians, are enthusiastically organized to support this exhibition, the Engineers are giving it their interested cooperation."
Left: Project for Glass Skyscraper, Hugh Ferris, Ibid., p. 4. Right: Double House, Bauhaus, Dessau, Germany, by Walter Gropius. State Theater, Jena, by Walter Gropius and Adolph Meyer, Germany, Ibid., p. 25.
Albert Frey's colleagues from Brussels, Eggericx, Verwilghen, Victor Bourgeois (La Cité Moderne), Louis Van der Swaelmen, and many others all contributed work with which he was familiar, as did Le Corbusier with his Pessac project and other French work by Lurcat, Gueverkian, and Mallet-Stevens, Gropius with his Bauhaus, Knud Longberg-Holm, and much more.
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Conceptual Concrete Parking Tower, unbuilt, 1927, designed by Albert Frey. (Rosa, p. 20).
While at Leuenberger & Flickiger from February 1927 to October 1928, Frey found the time to work on many personal projects and competitions to explore his own ideas and ready himself for the big move to Paris. One project was for a multi-story Concrete Parking Tower, and another was a Factory of Steel and Glass. He was attempting to produce some drawings that expressed Le Corbusier's architectural design elements to beef up his portfolio for his job interview. (See above and below.) (Rosa, pp. 20-21).
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Conceptual Factory of Steel and Glass, unbuilt, designed by Albert Frey, 1927. (Rosa, p. 21).
In April, Frey's long-term vision of moving to America was reinforced by yet another excerpt from Neutra's book in Das Werk. This time, the article was "A Small House Group in La Jolla," on R. M. Schindler's Pueblo Ribera project, which also appeared in Architectural Record two years later. (Author's note: Schindler's Pueblo Ribera project was also published in A. Lawrence Kocher's Architectural Record in July 1930, the month before Albert Frey arrived in New York and began his partnership with Kocher. See more at my "A. Lawrence Kocher, Architectural Record, Richard Neutra, R. M. Schindler, Frank Lloyd Wright, Albert Frey and the Evolution of Modern Architecture in New York and Southern California."Also, two of the projects Frey photographed during his 1932 trip to Los Angeles, besides the Olympic Stadium and MOMA's travelling International Style exhibition at Bullock's Department Store, were Neutra's Lovell Health House in Los Angeles and Schindler's Pueblo Ribera in La Jolla. Albert Frey Collection, UC-Santa Barbara)
Wie Baut Amerika?, by Richard Neutra, Julius Hoffmann, Stuttgart, 1927. Richard, Dione, and Frank Neutra next to R. M. Schindler at Kings Road, 1928. Photo by Jean Harris.
Le Corbusier also purchased Neutra's book and had a copy in his library when Frey finally joined the atelier in October 1928. (Le Corbusier et Livre, Exhibition of Le Corbusier's first edition books, COAC, Barcelona, 2005, p. 63).
"Die Antoniuskirche in Basil," Das Werk, Vol. XIV, No. 5, May 1927, pp. 131-138, 161-2..
Karl Moser's impressive, raw-reinforced concrete Antoniuskirsche in Basel was the next modernist project to appear in the pages of Das Werk in the May issue. Frey most certainly viewed the now iconic structure in person after its completion.
"The Outcome of the Competition for a New Building for the New League of Nations in Geneva," Das Werk, Vol. XIV, No. 5, May 1927, pp. XXIX-XXX.
The May 1927 issue of Das Werk also announced the results of the controversial Palace of the League of Nations design competition. Although the jury was unable to name a winner that would move forward to construction, it awarded a total of 27 prizes. Le Corbusier was awarded a first prize, and Hannes Meyer a second prize. It also stated that the total of 27 prize winners represented around fifty members of 8 countries in the European Union. Joseph Gantner further explained the illustrations of Richard Neutra's entry without crediting his partner, R. M. Schindler:
"We reproduce here, in order to give the reader an idea of the nature of the task, the extraordinarily interesting, non-award-winning project by the Viennese architect Richard Neutra, who lives in America, which a friend [Roger Ginsberger, Richard Neutra's brother-in-law] of our magazine has made available to us."
Internationale Neue Baukunst by Ludwig Hilbersheimer, Julius Hoffmann, Stuttgart, 1927, front cover and "Palace of the League of Nations, Geneva, Richard Neutra and R. M. Schindler, Architects, Ibid., p. 9.
Upon seeing the article in Das Werk, Werner Moser immediately notified Schindler of the faux pas of his not being credited. Neutra was chagrined by one of his wife's Niedermann relatives I Zurich omitting Schindler's name from the submittal to Gantner and made sure his name was added to the photo caption in Ludwig Hilbersheimer's 1927 Internationale neue Baukunst, the second book following Neutra's Wie Baut Amerika? in publisher Julius Hoffmann's Bau-Bücher series. (See more on Moser, Neutra, and Schindler in my "Taliesin Class of 1924". For an excellent analysis of the League of Nations design competition, see Richard Neutra and the Search for Modern Architecture by Thomas Hines, Oxford University Press, New York, 1988, pp. 70-72 and endnote 6.
"The Competition for Building the Palace of the Society of Nations in Geneva," Das Werk, Vol. XIV, No. 6. June 1927, pp. 163-171.
Left: Letter from Alfred Roth in Stuttgart to Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret in Paris, July 27, 1927. From Le Corbusier Le Grand, edited by Jean-Louis Cohen and Tim Benton, Phaidon, New York, 2019, p. 188. Right: Living room on the ground floor of the double house, Weissenhof, Stuttgart, July 1927. Painting by Willi Baumeister. (Le Corbusier Le Grand), p. 192.
Albert Frey corresponded with Le Corbusier and Jeanneret by letter from the Weissenhof job site, bravely reporting progress and stating that the deadline for the opening of the exposition on July 23rd would be met. At the same time, he was compiling a book on the project that would be published in early September. The letter was written on stationery designed by Willi Baumeister, who would also provide paintings to stage the new units.
Award Ceremony at the League of Nations Palace, Geneva, 1927. From left to right: Victor Horta, Belgium (President), A. Muggia, Italy, Karl Moser, Switzerland, Ch. Lemaresquier, France, B. Attolico, Italy (General Secretary), Josef Hoffmann, Austria, J. Burnet, England, H. P. Brelage, Holland, Ch. Gato, Spain, and I. Tengbom, Sweden. From "Das Wettbewerbsprojekt fur den Volkersbund Palast in Genf," by Ernest Strebel. (Oeschlin, p. 97).
During May and June, an extensive letter-writing campaign took place between Moser and fellow judges on the panel and Le Corbusier and League officials. Modernists exploited this controversy with all the means at their disposal. (Oeschlin, p. 66).
Left: "The Powerful Liberator: Le Corbusier," by E. Henvaux, La Cité, Vol. 6, No. 9, June-July 1927, pp. 85-92 and VIII plates.
"Le Corbusier's first writings appeared, as we know, a few years after the war, in the magazine "L'Esprit Nouveau," edited by Messrs. Ozenfant and Ch. E. Jeanneret. Those interested in contemporary aesthetic problems cannot forget the vitality and enthusiasm of L'Esprit Nouveau. They themselves know to what powerful extent this publication helped to liberate the plastic arts, literature, and music. For living architecture, L'Esprit Nouvea did even more, thanks to Le Corbusier."
The August 1927 issue of La Cité contained a report on the results of the judging of the 377 entrants to the "Concours Pour la Palais de la Société de Nations à Genève." The Belgian architects maintained that the jury did not respect the conditions of the contract governing the competition, and that this observation is all the more painful since there are several exciting projects among the unclassified projects whose authors respected the stipulations of the program. The Central Society of Architecture of Belgium calls upon the members of the Council of the League of Nations to reconsider the final outcome of the competition."
"The Competition for Building a League of Nations Palace in Geneva, The Project of MM. Hannes Meyer and Hans Witter, General Considerations," Das Werk, Vol. XIV, No. 7, July 1927, pp. 223-226.
Editor Joseph Gantner published Hannes Meyer and Hans Witter's League of Nations design in the July issue, which also contained a construction update on the German Werkbund's Weissenhofsiedlung in Stuttgart. (See below.)
"For the Opening of the Great Werkbund Exhibition," Das Werk, Vol. XIV, No. 7, July 1927, pp. XXXIV-XXXV.
Frey was likely intrigued with the August issue of Das Werk, since it contained an analysis of the League of Nations design competition and a brief discussion of two more of the projects by Scheibler-Schnabel and August Perret. Editor Joseph Gantner opined:
"Das Werk ... published the Le Corbusier project in its June issue, the Neutra (together with R. M. Schindler) project in its May issue, and the Meyer-Wittwer project in its July issue, thus drawing attention to three of the most interesting and best works ever. ... Public opinion in the Germanic countries has so overwhelmingly favored Le Corbusier's ingenious solution that even the political authorities in Geneva can no longer ignore this project, which as rightly been described as by far the best of all." ("The League of Nations Competition," Joseph Gantner, Das Werk, Vol. XIV, No. 8, August 1927, pp. 254-256. Author''s note: Although the Neutra-Schindler entry failed to win a prize, it was selected along with those of Le Corbusier and Hannes Meyer and Hans Witter of Basel for display at the German Werkbund "Die Wohnung" ehibition in Stuttgart in conjunction with the Weissenhof housing exhibition and then traveling to orther major European ceenters. (Hines, p. 72)
"Die Wohnungsausstelung Stuttgart 1927, De Beiden Hauser Le Corbusier und Pierre Jeanerret," Das Werk, Vol. XIV, No. 9, September 1927, pp. 260-278.
The September 1927 issue of Das Werk contained a 19-page article on the Weissenhof, about four pages of which were focused on the former Swiss architect, Le Corbusier. Another five pages were committed to the ongoing controversy over the League of Nations design competition. The issue also announced the publication of Zwei Wohnhauser von Le Corbusier und Pierre Jeanneret by Alfred Roth by the Akademischer Verlag in Stuttgart. (Ibid., p. XXXIII).
Left: Bau und Wohnung, Forward by Mies van der Rohe and designed by Willi Baumeister, Deutschen Werkbund, Verlag Wedikind, Stuttgart, 1927. Right: "Sonderausgabe Baukunst und Bauhanwerk," Model and plan of the layout of the Weissenhofsiedlung showing the architects taking part, Stuttgart, July 23, 1927.
The German Werkbund published a book on Weissenhof in conjunction with the exposition which included a preface by Mies van der Rohe and contributions by Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret (Five Points for a New Architecture), Victor Bourgeois (Remember the Limits!), Walter Gropius (Ways to Factory Made House Production), J. J. P. Oud (Explanatory Report) and many others. Richard Neutra managed to get an ad for his book Wie Baut Amerika? Placed on the same page, adjacent to the model and plan of Weissenhof.
Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeaneret, L'Architecture Vivante, Première Série, edited by Jean Badovici, Morance Editions, Paris, 1927. (In Le Corbusier et Livre, Exhibition of Le Corbusier's first edition books, COAC, Barcelona, 2005, p. 107).
In late 1927, L'Architecture Vivante also combined the fall and winter editions into a single extract, which again included the Palace of the Society of the League of Nations in Geneva, Pavilion de l'Esprit Nouveau in Paris, Villa Stein in Garches, Villa La Roche, and Pessac in Bordeaux, among other Le Corbusier projects. Albert Frey was very likely to have seen this in Le Corbusier's atelier after he arrived.
Das Bauhaus in Dessau und Seine Arbeiten, by Will Grohmann, Das Werk, Vol. 14, No. 1, January 1928, pp. 4-13.
Das Werk's January 1928 issue contained a 10-page article, "The Bauhaus in Dessau and Its Works," which included buildings designed by Walter Gropius and furniture designed by Gropius and Marcel Breuer with photos by Lucy Moholy-Nagy. This article would have been of great interest to Frey. The same issue also included an article on the German Werkbund "Neues Bauen" exhibition in Basel, which Frey was almost certain to have taken in.
Left: Exhibition catalog for Neues Bauen Wanderaustellung des Deutschen Werkbundes, by Hans Schmidt, Gewerbemuseum Basel, February 12 to March 11, 1928. Center and right: Directory of Architects, Ibid., pp. 19-20.
The "New Building" exhibition, a traveling showcase of the German Werkbund, was a significant event in 1928. It focused on promoting modern architectural styles and designs, particularly those associated with the Werkbund's vision for a new, functional, and aesthetically pleasing built environment. The exhibition aimed to educate the public about these new approaches and their potential for shaping a modern society.
Left: "Vom Neuen Bauen, Industrialisierung des Bauens" by Hans Schmidt, Das Werk, Vol. 14, No. 1 January 1928, pp. 34-37.
Albert Frey most likely viewed the German Werkbund exhibition in Basel in February or March 1928, as it was less than a one-hour train ride from Zurich, where he was then working. Architects in the exhibit included Frey's recent employer, J. J. Eggericx, and Victor Bourgeois, as well as his future employer, Le Corbusier. Richard Neutra was also featured in the show, likely through the generosity of Werner Moser, his Taliesin colleague from 1924.
The first of over thirty letters of correspondence between Siedfried Giedion and Le Corbusier regarding the planning of the inaugural meeting of CIAM took place when Giedion wrote to Le Corbusier in March 1928 with great concerns over who would eventually show up in La Sarraz.
"As for the congress, I am skeptical. Madame de Mandrot came to us when everything was set! It's too late. - Architecture is not a social toy! Moser returned from Germany yesterday. We will speak with her and send you the program of the Dutch and the Swiss. There is a possible danger that both countries will not come. Naturally, the Dudocks [sic], Mallet-Stevens, etc., come, but it is necessary that the young people do not abstain, nor the Swiss, nor the May and Stams, etc. Without that? Madame de Mandrot writes that she receives acclamations from all countries, but WHO comes, who really comes, the NAMES, that is, the level of the congress. Do you know precisely WHO WANTS TO COME?" ("Un Verano de 1928," Guillemette Morel Journel, LC. Revue de Recherches sur Le Corbusier, No. 6, pp. 72-90).
Villa La Roche picture gallery interior design by Charlotte Perriand with assistance from Alfred Roth, 1928. (Barsac, pp. 110-111).
In the meantime, the Villa La Roche picture gallery badly needed an interior redesign after it suffered the explosion of two radiators in the winter of 1927. This was Charlotte Perriand's moment to shine with her first Le Corbusier assignment, and she answered with one of her creative interiors, thoughtfully redesigning the room with assistance from Alfred Roth to embellish its warmth with her new furniture and also improve its lighting fixtures. The above picture was staged for publicity purposes; all the furniture pieces - Fauteuil grand comfort, Chaise lounge basculante, and Fauteuil dossier basculant - were carefully arranged around the table manifeste and photographed. (FLC and Barsc, p. 110).
Left: Villa Church guest house dining room, 1928, Charlotte Perriand, designer. (Barsac, p. 114). Right: Villa Church music pavilion, 1928, Charlotte Perriand, designer. Photograph by G. Thiriet. (Barsac, p. 117).
Perriand had so much success with the Villa La Roche that Le Corbusier confidently turned her loose on the Villa Church, where she spent much of the rest of 1928 duplicating her stellar efforts. Villa Church was a compound of three buildings: the guest house (Pavilion A), the library-music room (Pavilion B), and the residence for the Church couple (Pavilion C). She worked mainly on the interior design of the guest house and the music room with Alfred Roth. Albert Frey had some minor involvement after he joined the atelier in October.
Diagram on Alfred Roth's lecture on Le Corbusier, April 10, 1928. (Roth, p. 50).
After Weissenhof, Roth returned to Le Corbusier's atelier in November 1927 and began working on Villa Stein in Garches and Villa Church in Ville d'Avray, soon to be joined by Charlotte Perriand. In mid-January 1928, he was invited by the avant-garde Dutch group of architects to lecture on his mentor Le Corbusier. The date of April 10th was chosen, and Roth started carefully planning his lecture. He recalled Gerritt Reitveld, Jan Duiker, Cornelis van Easteren, and many other notable Dutch architects being in attendance. (Roth, p. 50).
Alfred Roth also reminisced about working on what would in 1930 become the Immeuble Clarte in Geneva, but began as a study for the Wanner Building in 1928.
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Project 'Mundaneum' Geneva, 1928. (Roth, p. 47).
In early 1928, Roth also worked on the Mundaneum, of which he recalled:
"The idea of the Mundaneum came from Belgian philanthropist Paul Otlet who hoped to use this Le Corbusier commission to create a worldwide educational, scientific, and cultural institute that would complement the League of Nations' scientific objectives. There was no actual pre-financed contract, but the idea interested, and even excited Le Corbusier to such an extent that he and Pierre Jeanneret were happy to contribute to the realization of the promising idea , even without remuneration. Another factor was undoubtedly the quiet hope that, despite the great disappointments experienced in the League of Nations competition, this new proposal would enable them to re-establish contact with the Geneva orgamnization. " (Roth, p. 45).
Left: Nestle Pavilion, Paris Fair, 1928. (From Le Corbusier Le Grand, p. 182). Right: Le Corbusier and P. Jeanneret, L'Architecture Vivante, Deuxieme Serie, Albert Morance, Patis, 1929.
The Nestlé Pavilion also needed to be completed in time for the April-May Paris Fair at the Porte de Versailles. Le Corbusier's Villa Guiette in Belgium, Palace of the League of Nations, Weissenhof, Nestles Pavilion, Mundaneum, Palais du Peuple in Paris for the Salvation Army, Centrosoyuz, Villa Stein at Garches, Villa Church, and Villa Savoye projects all appeared in the deuxième série of L'Architecture Vivante in 1929. According to Roth, he worked on the Nestle design alone.
"Here, a construction system needed to be developed. This allowed for quick assembly and equally easy disassembly, so the pavilion could be reused elsewhere after the Paris Fair. Nestle provided various products and packages for the interior design, so we had a substantial supply of chocolate and biscuits in the studio. Since I was almost always short of cash, I allowed myself to secretly subsist on this supply, so that after a short time, nothing but empty packages remained." (Roth, p. 46).
Competition Project 'Centrosoyuz' Moscow, 1928, executed 1929-31. (Roth, p. 46).
In May, Roth began working on the design of the Centrosoyuz Administration Building, for which Le Corbusier had just been invited to participate in the design competition for the Moscow project. Le Corbusier submitted the completed package to Moscow in July after the inaugural CIAM conference in La Sarraz in late June.
Left: Revista de Occidente, Vol. 6, No. 59, May 1928, cover. Le Corbusier: Madrid: 1928, Una Casa-Un Palicio, Publ. Residencia des Estudiantes, Madrid, 2010.
Le Corbusier visited Madrid in May to deliver two lectures. The Sociedad de Cursos y Conferencias invited him to lecture at the Residencia de Estudiantes: once on “Architecture, Furniture and Works of Art” and the other under the title “Una Casa-Un Palacio,” a summary of an early draft of his Une Maison - Un Palais to be published in Paris in late 1928. While in Madrid, a 37-page article, "Arquitectura de época maquinista" (Architecture of the Machinist Period) was published in the May 1928 issue of Revista de Occidente. After he returned to Paris, he again had to reassure a quite nervous Giedion that their joint vision would prevail in moving the CIAM organization forward. (Journal, p. 74).
Left: Cahiers d'Art, Vol. 3, No. 5-6. May-June 1928. Right: "The Problem of Luxury in Modern Architecture on a New Building in Garches," Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret, architects, by Siegfried Giedion, Ibid., pp. 254-260.
After publishing three lengthy articles on Le Corbusier's League of Nations project over the last year, Christian Zervos again published Siegfried Giedion's article on Le Corbusier's Garches project in the May-June 1928 issue of Cahiers d'Art just before the inaugural CIAM conference at La Sarraz.
Left: "Das Program Loucheur," Das Neue Frankfurt, Vol. 2, No. 9, September 1928, p. 161. Right: "Le Corbusier. Creative Urban Planning, Thoughts on the New Housing Law," by Le Corbusier, Ibid., p. 162.
Le Corbusier's atelier had already been busy generating numerous layouts since the summer of 1928, and Albert Frey contributed his own upon his arrival in October 1929.
Even though he knew he wouldn't be able to attend the second CIAM conference meeting due to his Brazil lecture tour, Le Corbusier asked Jeanneret to present the Maisons Laucheur in Frankfurt:
Walter Gropius's masterpiece, the Bauhaus, had opened to great fanfare in Dessau in late 1926. Publicity following the opening was ubiquitous throughout the European architectural journals, such as Das Werk, and was most likely read by Albert Frey and Alfred Roth. Indeed, Roth had applied to the new school and been accepted to study art when he instead joined Le Corbusier's atelier to work on Le Corbusier's League of Nations design team in January 1927.
To control the outcome of future events, Le Corbusier and Giedion selected the architects invited to the congress; Giedion's task was "to keep the often confused paths of the present distinct from each other." At the congress, Giedion was made secretary general of the organization. Publication of his book in early June undoubtedly helped get him elected. Copies were likely on sale, or at least available to view, at the conference. The League of Nations competition scandal was certainly discussed among the conference attendees. Albert Frey was in Zurich at the time of La Sarraz and perhaps also had the opportunity to view Giedion's book. ("Un Verano de 1928," Guillemette Morel Journel, LC. Revue de Recherches sur Le Corbusier, No. 6, pp. 72-90).
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Left: Nikolas Kolli and Ernest Weissmann on the deck of the to-be-remodeled Asile Flottant, January 1930. Photographer likely Pierre Jeanneret. (Boone, p. 112). Right: Top: Elevation, section, and plan, July 9, 1929, Asile Flottant, Paris 1928-9. Bottom: Rendering of the barge on the Seine, 1929. From Le Corbusier Le Grand, p. 246.
Le Corbusier wasted no time in inserting himself as the expert on the new Loucheur Law passed by the French legislature in July 1928. The law was intended to boost low-income housing across France and to build 260,000 new apartments. The design elements of his earlier Pessac project in Bordeaux fit perfectly into the new law's requirements. He opened his September Das Werk piece with,
"I was told a completely reassuring statement by Mr. Loucheur: "We won't be able to start for at least a year!" I call that wisdom. It would be catastrophic to begin right now. Loucheur's program presents us with a series of tasks that must be solved simultaneously. Without an overall plan, nothing can reasonably be undertaken. Everything flows into one another. And the architecture of the future, which is to bear witness to a state of social equality in our era, demands innumerable objectives. One must first cover the entire chessboard with pieces, so to speak. Pose the problem as a whole and solve it as a whole. Only when this program is set up synchronously can one divide the chessboard into parts and localize the work to one or the other part. So: conception of the whole synchronously, execution successively. In this way, each part will be absorbed into the whole."
Le Corbusier began in earnest designing prototypes for low-cost housing in his atelier and had every person in the studio working on designs on and off over the next year and a half.
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"Minimum Metal House, 1928, project, Albert Frey, designer." From Rosa, p. 22.
Frey's preoccupation with residential housing started to blossom as he readied himself for the move to Le Corbusier's atelier. Perhaps inspired by Le Corbusier's mid-1928 widespread publicity on Loucheur Law maisons, he developed his own concept for a "Minimum Metal House." As can be seen in his above drawing, all of the private spaces and the kitchen are open to the living area, eliminating the need for corridors. Each room has built-in cabinets to eliminate storage. This was also his first project using corrugated metal as an exterior sheathing material. It definitely piqued Le Corbusier's interest as he talked about similar low-cost houses in terms of prefabrication, as will be shown later herein. The house also presaged Frey's 1930-1 Aluminaire House design after moving to New York and partnering with A. Lawrence Kocher. (Rosa, pp. 15, 22).
Left: Wettbewerb Altersheim Zuerich, Housing for the Old, Albert Frey, architect, Rosa, p. 23. Right: "Entwurf Stadtisches Altersheim Zurich-Wipkingen," Gottlieb Gautschi and Ernst Zumthor, architects, Das Werk, Vol. XIV, No. 9, September 1928, pp. 286-7.
In early 1928, Frey applied for a visa to go to America, which took almost a year and a half to finally be approved. In the meantime, he unsuccessfully entered a retirement-nursing home design competition in the Wipkingen neighborhood of Zurich, demonstrating that he had taken his architectural skills to the next level. This project would also look good in his interview portfolio with Le Corbusier. The month before Frey left for Paris, another project design for the same competition was published in the September 1928 issue of Das Werk. That project design was disqualified due to the architects not meeting all of the design requirements and not being residents of Zurich. (Rosa, p. 15).
Bundesschule des Allgemeinen Deutschen Gewerkshaftbundes in Bernau, Hannes Meyer, architect, by Adolf Behne, Das Werk, Vol. XV, No. 9, September 1928, pp. 88-90.
The very next article in the same September issue was about Hannes Meyer's Federal School of the German Trade Federation in Bernau. It was Hannes Meyer's September 1925 article in Das Werk, "Young Art in Belgium," on the avant-garde scene in Brussels that originally attracted Frey to relocate there.
Max Ernst Haefli in the H. Girsberger & Co. Bookshop in Zurich in 1926. On display are Mendelsohn's Amerika, the exhibition catalog for the 1923 Bauhaus Exhibition, and Die Buhne im Bauhaus. (From Anatomy of the Architectural Book by Andres Tavares, Canadian Center for Architecture, Lars Muller, Publishers, Zurich, 2016, p. 60).
Albert Frey would most certainly have spent much time browsing through the Girsberger bookshop in Zurich both before and after his first stint in Brussels. Mendelsohn's Amerika and Neutra's Wie Baut Amerika? were both strong attractions he had in mind on his first trip to Paris in the fall of 1928. (Rosa, p. 17).
Shortly after Frey joined the Paris atelier, Corbusier led off the January 1929 issue of L'Architecture Vivante. "Reflections on the Loucheur Law" was Le Corbusier's answer to the question from the editor, "What is your opinion of the Loucheur Law?" which was first published in the August 1928 issue of La Revue des Vivant. Near the end of his three-page response, Le Corbusier opined,
"Thanks to the Loucheur Law, France, which has behind it the magnificent 19th-century tradition of iron, France, which is the creator of reinforced concrete, France, which is the country where the purest builders are found, can place itself on a magnificent pedestal by virtue of the Loucheur Law and provide the solution for the modern house, the solution for modern urban planning, the solution for modern architecture."
Left: Maison Loucheur, standard two-bedroom apartment, Le Corbusier, Pierre Jeanneret, architects, Charlotte Perriand, interior designer, axonometric rendering, October 1928. (Barsac, p. 122). Right: Maison Loucheur apartment variation drawn by Albert Frey. (Rosa, p. 17)
Left: Maison Loucheur apartment type MS 1E, night use, day use, Le Corbusier, Pierre Jeanneret, architects, and Charlotte Periand, interior designer, plan drafted by Kunio Maekawa, October 3, 1929. FLC 18238. (Barsac, p. 123). Right: top: Maison Loucheur, three-bedroom, F-type apartment, axonometric rendering, no. 2016, Le Corbusier, Pierre Jeanneret, architects, and Charlotte Periand, interior designer, October 26, 19268, FLC 19388, Bottom: Maison Loucheur, three-bedroom apartment for multi-unit apartment project, reuse of plan no. 2018, axonimetric rendering, Le Corbusier, Pierre Jeanneret, architects, and Charlotte Periand, interior designer, November 6, 1928, FLC 20761. (Barsac, p. 124).
"We have established plans for fully industrialized houses, composed of the most expensive materials, and assembled with the greatest care. In a way, we have removed the house from the clay, quarry, and mortar; we have transported it to the factory, to the industrialist, onto the Taylorist conveyor-belt production line."
Not a single Maison Loucheur would roll out of the factory on the "conveyor-belt" of Taylorization, because the studio never received an order. (Barsac, p. 125).
"Das Bauhaus in Dessau und Seine Arbeiten," by Walter Gropius, Das Werk, Vol. 5, No. 1, January 1929, pp. 4-13.
"Stuttgart," L'Architecture Vivante, Spring 1928, front cover.
The Spring 1928 issue of L'Architecture Vivante was totally focused on Weissenhof, with Jean Badovici leading off with the editorial "A Propos de Stuttgart," followed by Le Corbusier's "La Signification de la Cité-Jardin du Weissenhof a Stuttgart."
The summer issue again had much on Weissenhof with Le Corbusier leading off with a four-page article titled "L'Amenagement Interieur de nos Maisons de Weissenhof," and Siegfried Giedion with the seven-page piece "La Leçon de L'Exposition du 'Werkbund' a Stuttgart 1927" ("The Lesson of the Werkbund Exposition"). An excerpt reads:
"Let us try to understand the courage of Le Corbusier, who had the audacity to mount his 'Pavilion of the New Spirit' as the only living cell at the center of the Paris Decorative Arts Exhibition in 1925. We know that this was not a 'Pavilion,' but a residential compartment of his newly organized cities, described in his book Towards an Architecture. Two years separate Paris from Stuttgart. Let us note the rapid progress made since then."
Bauen in Frankenreich, Bauen in Eisen, Bauen in Eisenbeton by Siegfried Giedion, Klinkhardt & Biermann, Leipzig/ Berlin, 1928.
Giedion's 1925 meeting with Le Corbusier at the Paris Exposition also led to an alliance that resulted in the first CIAM congress (Congres International d'Architecture Moderne) in June 1928. After viewing Weissenhof with Le Corbusier in October of the previous year and formulating plans for the formation of CIAM with him, Siegfried Gideon was concurrently working to publish his Bauen in Frankreich, Bauen in Eisen, Bauen in Eisenbeton by early June, so that the book could at least be on view at Sarraz. He included at least twenty-five pages of Le Corbusier's new, modernist work, much of which had recently been published in L'Architecture Vivante, Cahiers d'Art, Das Werk, Der Cicerone, and other publications. Gideon waxed poetic in his praise of Le Corbusier's League of Nations project:
"Corbusier's design for the League of Nations Building (first prize ex aequo) contains the elements that constitute Corbusier's work and whose gradual development we tried to suggest. The synthesis of constructional and standardized elements, which are welded together through artistic vision into a totality, might explain the privileged position it has achieved among the 377 submitted entries. We need to consider here the competition for the League of Nations only insofar as it touches upon the large issues that run through the entire century. We thus encounter, perhaps for the last time in its history, the name of the Academie des Beaux-Arts." (Bauen in Frankreich, Bauen in Eisen, Bauen in Eisenbeton by Siegfried Giedion, Klinkhardt & Biermann, Leipzig/ Berlin, 1928, p. 187).
Siegfried Giedion, Pierre Jeanneret, hostess Helene de Mandrot, and Le Corbusier posing in costume in front of Mandrot's castle at La Sarraz, June 1928. Photo courtesy of the FLC.
Alfred Roth's slightly different understanding of the formation of CIAM is outlined in his Begenung mit Pionieren:
"[Helene de Mandrot] presented [Le Corbusier] with her plan for a meeting in La Sarraz and gained his lively interest. He undoubtedly welcomed the offer ... because he hoped that a union of modern architects would provide welcome support in his still-ongoing struggle for the League of Nations project. This agreement, reached between Madame de Mandrot and Le Corbusier at the end of January or the beginning of February 1928, can thus be seen as the immediate historical precursor to the founding of the CIAM can be considered a milestone. Preparations for the meeting began immediately in Paris. The architect Gabriel Guevrekian, a friend of Le Corbusier, offered to provide the secretarial services until the conference. Madame de Mandrot and Le Corbusier wrote separately to Professor Karl Moser in Zurich, requesting his collaboration. Moser, in turn, contacted the art historian Dr. Sigfried Giedion and F. T. Gubler in Zurich, who had a particularly close relationship with the German Werkbund. Madame de Mandrot sent a similar letter to G. E. Magnat, secretary of the analogous association L'Oeuvre, in western Switzerland. In this way, the list of architects to be invited was compiled, and at the beginning of March, the invitations, expressly written in Madame de Mandrot's name, were sent out. She placed the palace and park at her free disposal for the conference and declared all participants her personal guests." (Roth, pp. 59-60).
Left: Official group photograph, CIAM I, La Sarraz, 1928. The full list of people in the photo includes, from left to right, top row: Mort Stam, Max Haefeli, R. Steiger, P. Artaria, F. T. Gubler (press and head of the Swiss Werkbund); middle row: R. Dupierreux (Institute Cooperation-Intellectuelle, Paris), Pierre Chareau, Victor Bourgeois, Ernst May, Alberto Sartoris (obscured behind Guevrekian), H. Schmidt, H. Häring, J. de Zavala, Le Corbusier, P. Rochat (press), H.R. von der Mühll, Huib Hoste, Siegfried Giedion, Werner Moser, Josef Frank; third row: Pierre Jeanneret (hand in pocket), Gerrit Rietveld, Gabriel Guévrékian, L. Florentin, Helene de Mandrot, Andre Lurçat (hand in pocket), G. Maggioni; seated: F. G. Mercadal, N. Weber, C. Tadevossian. Source: ETH Zurich, gta CIAM Archive (n.d.). Right: Le Corbusier, Victor Bourgeois, and hostess Helene de Mondrot having some fun at La Sarraz, June 1928.
Left: Le Corbusier's large colored board showing his view of relations between CIAM and those in political power. (Strauven, p. 158). Right: Newspaper clipping with a short report on the first CIAM congress on the front page of Le Peuple, vol. 44, no. 189, July 1928, simply repeating Bourgeois's press release verbatim. (Strauven, p. 160).
Karl Moser was elected president of the Congrès Internationaux d'Architecture Moderne (CIAM) but did not attend the first conference. Victor Bourgeois was chosen to replace Moser as conference moderator and, by all accounts, did a more than adequate job. As a result, he was deeply involved in the planning for the second congress scheduled in Frankfurt in late 1929. Bourgeois issued a press release summarizing the conference:
"An international conference of modern architecture. At the castle of Mrs. de Mandrot in La Sarraz, near Lausanne, an important congress of modern architecture has just taken place. Technicians from 12 European countries have examined some important topical problems: the action of the public authorities, youth education, and the adoption of a universal technical vocabulary. Statesmen, industrialists, and artists have granted their patronage to this movement, which the Swiss authorities welcomed warmly. The architects Le Corbusier, May, and Schmidt defended remarkable reports, and the architect Victor Bourgeois, a teacher at the Institut des Arts Decoratifs de l'Etat (La Cambre Institute), was charged with the presidency of this congress, which the Institut international de cooperation intellectuelle (International institute of intellectual cooperation) followed with great interest." (Strauven, note 111, p. 160).
After the conference in July, Le Corbusier and Fernand Leger went to the Villa Stein in Garches. Leger was so impressed that he called the house a "masterpiece." After visiting the architect's studio in Paris, the generous-spirited Leger, whose paintings were then selling for forty thousand francs, proposed an even exchange of paintings. (Le Corbusier: A Life by Nicholas Fox Weber, Knopf, New York, 2008, p. 276).
Left: Loi Loucheur, establissant un Programme de Construction d'Habitations a bon marche et de Logements, July 13, 1928., Chiron, Paris, 1928. Front cover. Right: L'Architecture Vivants, Spring-Summer 1929 front cover. (From Hathi Trust).
The August 1928 issue of La Revue des Vivants published the article "Reflections on the Loucheur Law," which was Le Corbusier's answer to the question from the editor, "What is your opinion of the Loucheur Law?" This was reproduced in L'Architecture Vivante in the Spring-Summer issue of 1929. Corbusier's first paragraph summarized:
"Same circumstances, same conclusion. In 1922, a Loucheur-Bonnevay bill called on Parliament to build 500,000 houses. In L'Esprit Nouveau, number 13, article "Mass-produced houses" discussing this imminent law and the consequences that would result from it, I wrote: "If Le Creusot, if Citroën, if Renault decided to consider the problem of the house, of the mass-produced house, built in a factory and on standard elements, the question of housing would be resolved and these firms, Le Creusot, Citroën and Renault would find there a prodigious field of activity and a source of immense wealth." ("January 1929" by Le Corbusier, L'Architecture Vivante, Spring and Summer, 1929, pp. 9-11)
At the time of this article, Le Corbusier's atelier had been pumping out various versions of the minimum house in their spare time, as discussed elsewhere. Le Corbusier envisioned holding a "Loucheur" exhibition in the spring of 1929, but the project was not ready, and there was no financing. (Barsac, p. 142).
Ernest Weissmann, Pierre Jeanneret, Le Corbusier, Charlotte Perriand, and Alfred Roth during a small party at the atelier. Ca. Late summer 1928. (Teissonniere, p. 57).
Une Maison - Un Palais by Le Corbusier, Cres Editions, Paris, 1929.
Le Corbusier worked hard to finish compiling his Une Maison—Un Palais after the La Sarraz CIAM conference. Albert Frey was likely a witness to the flurry of activity surrounding getting the book ready for press. When his book was finally published in January of 1929, he still thought he had a slight chance of gaining the commission. This is borne out by a letter he sent to Giedion in December 1928, asking if he had received the review copy of "1 Maison 1 Palais" and explaining why he wrote it. (Bosman, p. 136).
Das Neue Frankfurt's new editor, Joseph Gantner, inserted a blurb for Le Corbusier's new book:
“A few weeks ago, a new book by Le Corbusier was published: Une Maison-un Palais with the subtitle "A la recherche d'une unite architecturale" (Cres and Co. Publishing). The book is being published at the same time as the author's previous books and contains, among other things, the collected visual and documentary material on the League of Nations competition.” ("New Parisian Architecture Books," Joseph Gantner, Das Neue Frankfurt, Vol. 3, No. 2, February 1929, p. 34).
The first third of Le Corbusier's new book dealt with his Weissenhof houses, the Villa Garches, and the Villa Stein. The rest of the book covered his Palace of the League of Nations design in Geneva in great detail and the "scandalous" decision of the jury panel headed by Victor Horta of Belgium. He ended with a section listing all the support he had received across Europe, with statements from the national organizations of architects from France, Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Czechoslovakia, and Germany. Next came a list of magazines and journals supporting his entry, which included the Austrian, Swiss, and German Werkbunds, Opbouw, Das Werk, La Lumiere, Journal de Geneve, La Travail, Neue Zurcher Zeitung (Giedion), Basler Nachrichten, Frankfurter Zeitung (Joseph Gantner), L'Europe Nouvelle, 7 Arts (Victor Bourgeois), Vossiche Zeitung (Dr. Adolf Behne), Bauwelt, Cahiers d'Art (Christian Zervos), L'Architecture Vivante (Jean Badovici), L'Europe Centrale (Karl Tiege), La Suisse, and and supportive comments by Karl Moser, Henry Van de Velde, Louis Van der Swaelmen, H. P. Berlage, Mies van der Rohe, Walter Gropus, Ernst May and many others from many well-respected architectural journals. Quotes by Giedion and Bourgeois serve as an example of Le Corbusier's voluminous positive publicity:
"Out of 400 projects, only eight competitors provide living solutions (2%), and only one corresponded so closely in order and organization that execution could follow immediately. We have already spoken here of the Le Corbusier project (May 15), and today, after examining the project, we return to it. We can only explain the general praise that everyone is giving to this project by the fact the new architecture has here reached a level that has reached a postulate valid for all." (Siegfried Giedion, Neue Zurcher Zeitung, July 21, 1927).
"The European elite was moved by these negotiations, the best of the technical journals, the main architectural associations, and the most renowned architects of Germany, Holland, Austria, Czechoslovakia, France, Belgium, etc., took a position in favor of the Le Corbusier-Jeanneret project. Will the League of Nations prefer the political combinations of Italy and England to the vibrant artistic Europe?" (Victor Bourgeois, 7 Arts, November 27, 1927).
Try as he might to restrain his fury over the League of Nations decision in Geneva, he could not forget it. In a September 4th letter to his mother in response to her letter comforting him for what happened in Geneva, he continued,
"I have a furious rage against these bastards for what they have done and permitted to be done, and I am profoundly outraged and disturbed by the blinding desires for “justice” by which the comedy has been rigged. That I will not swallow. And when I think of the problem itself, handsome as it is; when I see, as I do this evening, for instance, the photos of the splendid site, then all over again I suffer fits of indignation, of imprecations against this huge coalition that has crushed us with weapons having nothing to do with architecture. Nothing to do with architecture. There is the entire drama." (Weber, p. 276).
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Left: New factory building, Roth & Co., Wagen an der Aare, Switzerland, design by Alfred Roth, 1928, executed 1929-30. North facade (Roth, p. 51). Right: Ibid., East facade.
At the invitation of Ingrid Wallberg, a fellow atelier-mate, to work on a project for the development of part of her property in Sweden, Alfred Roth decided to leave Le Corbusier at the end of July. His father tried unsuccessfully to talk him out of going to Sweden but was able the get Alfred to sketch out a design for a new factory building in the family-run spinning mill complex near their home in Wangen an der Aare. This was Roth's first official project, totally under his own name. (Author's note: There was a very brief overlap of Roth's and Frey's time together under the spell of Le Corbusier, but it was long enough for them to build a lifelong friendship and their reconnecting in both 1933 and 1938 in Zurich which I wrote at length about in my "Neutra, Schindler, Kocher, Frey").
Left: "Grand Opening of the Fair Palace," Josef Fuchs and Oldrich Tyl, architects, A Variety Week, September 15, 1928. Right:
Le Corbusier felt prosperous enough to treat his mother and brother Albert to an eight-day holiday in the mountains in early September. When he returned, he was soon off on another trip to Moscow via Prague, where he stopped briefly to lecture to a group of young architects and to view the grand opening of the Prague Trade Fair Palace. The Palace, the first ever "functional" building in Prague, made a strong impression on Le Corbusier during his visit. While he significantly critiqued its form, he believed it demonstrated that his proposal for the Palace of the League of Nations was not overambitious. It seems to have widened his horizons, with Corbusier stating afterwards that "When I saw the Trade Fair Palace, I realized how I have to create great buildings, I, who have up till now built only a few pretty small houses on modest budgets." (Wikipedia).
Left: Le Corbusier with Sergei Eisenstein and Andrei Burov, Moscow, October 1928. (Cohen, p. 48). Right: Cover of Stroitelstvo Moskvy, Vol. 5, No. 11, November 1928, Le Corbusier's first Centrosoyuz project. Cover design by Gustav Klucis. Right: Le Corbusier, Sergei Eisenstein, and Andrei Burov, Moscow, October 1928. (Cohen, p. 48).
It was then on to Moscow to cement his commission for the Centrosoyuz Administration Building. He had been invited the previous May to compete in a closed design competition for Centrosoyuz. He had mailed his first entry to Moscow in July after returning to Paris from La Sarraz. Albert Frey joined his atelier in October, shortly before Le Corbusier's return to Paris.
Left: Centrosoyuz design charrette completion party and New Year's Eve celebration at the Le Corbusier Atelier, December 31, 1928. From left: Ernest Weissmann, Le Corbusier, Nikolai Kolli, Albert Frey, Vladimir Nikolaievitch Barkof, Charlotte Perriand, Pierre Jeanneret. From 35 S, Atelier de Le Corbusier by Didier Teissonniere, Norma, 2024, p. 61. Right: Model of Centrosoyuz Administration built by Albert Frey, beginning of 1929. (Rosa, p. 16 and Cohen, p. 86).
Albert Frey finally arrived in Paris in October 1928 on a student visa. On his first full day in Paris, he visited Le Corbusier's atelier at 35 Rue de Sevres and showed his portfolio to Pierre Jeanneret. Jeanneret expressed his interest and invited Frey back within the week. Le Corbusier always spent his mornings painting in his home studio. On Frey's first afternoon, he met Le Corbusier on his daily rounds, stopping at each table to critique the work progress. Then working in the atelier were Josep Lluis Cert, Kunio Maekawa, Charlotte Perriand, Ernest Weissman, and briefly Alfred Roth, who was soon to leave for Sweden. The latter three were the only paid employees.
Nikolai Kolli, Yvonne Gallis, Le Corbusier, and Pierre Jeanneret at the Rue Jacob dinner table. (Cohen, p. 81)
The first thing Frey worked on for Le Corbusier was the Centrosoyuz project model, and he tweaked some of the drawings and renderings for minor changes that surfaced during Le Corbusier's time in Moscow shortly before Frey's arrival. Le Corbusier had been invited by the Russians to enter the design competition for the building in May. When Frey arrived in Paris, Le Corbusier had just returned from Moscow, where he had been since September networking to reinforce his July design competition submission.
Left: Nikolas Kolli and Ernest Weissmann on the deck of the to-be-remodeled Asile Flottant, January 1930. Photographer likely Pierre Jeanneret. (Boone, p. 112). Right: Top: Elevation, section, and plan, July 9, 1929, Asile Flottant, Paris 1928-9. Bottom: Rendering of the barge on the Seine, 1929. From Le Corbusier Le Grand, p. 246.
After completing the Centrosoyuz model, Frey worked on the Asile Flottant, the second of Le Corbusier's three projects for the Salvation Army, in early 1929. Ernest Weissmann also worked on the project after visiting the site with Pierre Jeanneret and Nikolai Kolli in January before Kolli returned to Moscow.
Left: Asile Flottant, Seine River, Paris, 1928-30. Right: Nikolai Kolli at the Asile Flottant, late January 1930. Photo by Ernest Weissmann (Boone, p. 114). Right: The completed Asile Floattant, Seine River, Paris, ca. 1929-30. Photographer unknown.
After Kolli returned to Moscow, he wrote to Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret about the positive impressions he had taken away from Paris:
"I must admit in all sincerity that in the course of my two months in Paris, the fact of laboring daily in your office became a truly agreeable routine, and I keenly feel the absence of your most friendly assistance. The Project [Centrosoyuz] we have brought back with us from Paris is considered with quite exceptional interest. The CS executive finds that it corresponds exactly to all their desires. No fault has been found with the architectural composition." (Cohen, pp. 85-6).
Pleased with the progress of the Arsile Flottant, the Salvation Army again approached Le Corbusier in May 1929, two months before Albert Frey left the atelier, and commissioned him to begin design on the Cité de Refuge. That project was not completed until 1933, by which time Frey was well established in New York.
Left: "Le Corbusier's Project for the Headquarters of the Union of Russian Consumer Operatives: Shops ("Centrosyus") in Moscow," Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret, architects, by Roger Ginsburger, Das Neue Frankfurt, Vol. III, No. 2, February 1929, p. 35. Right: "New Geneva Illusions: The Mundaneum," Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret, Architects, Ibid., p. 36
"New Geneva Illusions," (Mundaneum) by Roger Ginsburger, Ibid., p. 37.
Shortly after Albert Frey arrived, he was put to work on the model of the Centrosoyuz Administration Building to be built in Moscow. He also quickly became involved in the Mundaneum project, designed to be integrated into the original lakeside site as the Palace of the League of Nations. Both projects were soon published by Roger Ginsburger (Richard Neutra's brother-in-law) in the February 1929 issue of Das Neue Frankfurt. (Author's note: Editor Joseph Gantner included a blurb on the recent publication of Le Corbusier's Une Maison -Un Palais, and also in this issue were a "Photo Report from Paris", also by Roger Ginsburger, and Richard Neutra had an article on "Furnishing-Mailorder Houses-Furniture Fairs in America." This seemingly indicates that Ginsburger and Neutra were already in discussions with Gantner over the three-book "Neuen Bauen in der Welt" series in 1930, which would include Neutra's Amerika and Ginsburger's Frankreich. Neutra also published a book review of Gantner's Grundformen der Europaischen Stadt (Basic Forms of the European City) in the November 1929 issue of Architectural Record. Author's note: Richard Neutra and Joseph Gantner developed a relationship via Werner Moser when they were at Taliesin together in 1924. See more at my "Taliesin Class of 1924: A Case Study in Publicity and Fame").
S.d.N. No. 2, Palace of the League of Nations, Geneva, Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret, architects, January 1929.
In early January of 1929, Le Corbusier also asked Frey to work on the League of Nations project on a second, last-gasp design for a new location in Geneva's Ariana Park, the land for which was donated to the city by an ancestor of 1928 CIAM I hostess Helene de Mandrot. She was the only one of five heirs to the park property whose permission was required by the deed, holding out in the hope that Le Corbusier would somehow be chosen as the project architect. The holdout ended unsuccessfully except for the publication of Une Maison-Un Palais in 1928 and a July 9, 1930, contract to design and build for her the Villa de Mandrot in the town of La Pradet, France, in 1931. (Oeschlin, p. 68 and Fondation Le Corbusier).
Left: Le Corbusier et P. Jeanneret, L'Architecture Vivante, Troiseme Serie, 1929. On the cover is the site plan for Le Corbusier's Palace of the League of Nations. Right: Chairs designed by Charlotte Perriand, Salon d'Automne, Paris, November 1929, L'Architecture Vivante, Spring 1930, Ibid.
The above third series of L'Architecture Vivante included the Centrosoyuz project in Moscow, an essay on the Loucheur Law titled "Le Problem de la Maison Minimum," and numerous combinations of Maisons Loucheur, the unbuilt Maison Caneel, the Salvation Army Arsile Flottant, the November 1929 Salon d'Automne in Paris with Charlotte Perriand's furniture, and many other projects. This publication was likely viewed with great interest by Albert Frey after he relocated to Brussels in September 1929.
The following issue, Summer 1929, was totally dedicated to the work of Le Corbusier. The projects in which Albert Frey collaborated included the Villa d'Avray, a.k.a. the Villa Church, the Mundaneum, the Centrosoyuz in Moscow, the Villa Savoye, the Palace of the League of Nations, and the Loucheur Law low-cost houses.
Left: "Oeuvres Recentes de Le Corbusier et P. Jeanneret," L'Architecture Vivante, August 1929, front cover. Right: "Villa L'Escale, La Panne, Belgium, J. J. Eggericx, Architect, L'Architecture Viviante, Autumn 1928.
Albert Frey was working in Le Corbusier's atelier when a project he had perhaps contributed to in some way during his first stint at Eggericx & Verwilghen appeared in the pages of the Fall-Winter 1928 issue of L'Architecture Vivante, i.e., the Villa L'Escale, an ocean-front boutique hotel on the Belgian coast in La Panne. The previous issue featured the Weissenhoff Estate at Stuttgart with Le Corbusier's two houses represented.
L'Architecture Vivante, Ete MCMXXIX, pp. 47-48.
Left: Model and plan of the layout of the Weissenhoffsiedlung, showing the architects invited to take part. Sonderausgabe Baukunst und Bauhandwerk, Stuttgart, July 23, 1927 From( Strauven, p. 143). Right: Zwei Wohnhauser von Le Corbusier und Pierre Jeann(e)ret durch Alfred Roth, Wedekind, Stuttgart, 1927.
The above plan of the Weissenhofsiedlung in Stuttgart lists the architects selected to participate in the housing exposition. To the right of the plan was a blurb from Richard Neutra's new book, Wie Baut America? (How Does America Build?).
"While this book is not directly related to German architecture, it is of the utmost importance for this new technology, as it is for both countries. It shows how people build in America, where rationalization has progressed much further in construction than in our country. Some of these techniques are already being used here, and many of the proponents of the new architectural style find them problematic. The book is of inestimable value to building engineers because it is written by a German expert from his own many years of experience. The special value of this book lies in the fact that Neutra also provides the "recipes." We will return to this book later."
Albert Frey had seen this book and was inspired to move to America at the earliest opportunity, like its author. (Roth, p. 15).
House X for Dr. Walter Boll, designed by Victor Bourgeois in the Weissenhofsiedlung, Stuttgart, 1927. (Strauven, p. 17).
Victor Bourgeois was one of the 17 architects chosen to design one of the Weissenhof projects. He visited the site of his house for Dr. Boll four times during construction, once in the company of Hannes Meyer from the Bauhaus. The two also visited Frankfurt and were greatly impressed by Ernst May's accomplishments. The interior design for the Boll residence was completed by P. Feile, Boll's brother-in-law and a pupil of Josef Hoffmann. During the exhibition, the house was opened up to visitors like all the other dwellings on the Weeissenhofsiedlung, and Belgian artwork was exhibited: rugs by Paul Haesaerts, paintings by Bourgeois's 7 Arts collaborator, Pierre-Louis Floquet, and sculptures by Oscar Jespers, a fellow professor at La Cambre and soon-to-be Bourgeois client. (Strauven, postcard from Hannes Meyer to Bourgeois dated June 11, 1927, note 133, p. 164 and Ibid., p. 365. 7 Arts (1922-1928), by Ronny Van de Velde, 2017, pp. 84-107).
Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe at Weissenhof, Stuttgart, October 1927. From Charnel House.
Left: Le Corbusier, color scheme of single villa, drawing by Alfred Roth with annotations by Le Corbusier (Alfred Roth, Zurich) from Weissenhof 1927 and the Modern Movement in Architecture by Richard Pommer and Christian F. Otto, University of Chicago Press, 1991, plate 3. Right: Le Corbusier, color samples for Weissenhof villas (Roth, p. 35).
While overseeing the construction of Le Corbusier's two dwellings at Weissenhof, Roth was approached by Akademie Verlag about the possibility of producing a book before the exhibition ended in October. Roth excitedly wrote to Le Corbusier and Jeanneret in late June for advice and was given the go-ahead with some instructions by Pierre. Le Corbusier was to contribute a text, and his "Five Points of Architecture" was to be translated into German. Willi Baumeister was to oversee the typographic design of the book. (Roth, p. 34).
Left: Room sequence by day. Oil painting by Willi Baumeister. Right: Room sequence for the night with beds pushed forward. (Roth, pp. 36-7).
Besides being totally responsible for the book as well as overseeing the construction of Le Corbusier's Weissenhof dwellings, Roth somehow found the time to decorate the rooms by having the walls painted with Corbusier's color schemes, install artwork by an excited Willy Baumiester, stage the rooms with furniture, and design and have fabricated the beds for all three units.
Left: Zwei Wohnhauser von Le Corbusier und Pierre Jeann(e)ret durch Alfred Roth, Wedekind, Stuttgart, 1927. Right: J. J. P. Oud, Hollandische Architektur, Langen, Munchen, 1926.
Roth met and befriended many of the Weissenhof architects and their assistants, and had a book release party in mid-September. He particularly recalled being so impressed by the persona of J. J. P. Oud that he purchased his book as well. (Roth, pp. 32-34).
Left: Pierre Jeanneret, Le Corbusier, F. T. Gubler, and Siegfried Giedion visiting Alfred Roth's family farm in Wangen an der Aare, Switzerland, October 1927. Photo by Alfred Roth. (Roth, p. 42). Right: Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe at the Weissenhof exhibition, Stuttgart, Germany, 1927. They are second and third from the right. From Neumann, 112.
Le Corbusier and Jeanneret visited Siegfried Giedion in Zurich in early October of 1927, where they had a "council of war" on the Palace of the League of Nations and strategized a retaliatory campaign of response. They also brainstormed ideas about the formation of a group that would soon become known as the Congrès Internationaux d’Architecture Moderne (CIAM). The above-left photo depicts an impromptu visit by Le Corbusier and Giedion to the family farm of Alfred Roth in Wangen an der Aare, Switzerland, where he had returned a few days earlier from overseeing the construction of Le Corbusier's Weissenhof houses in Stuttgart. It was likely then that Le Corbusier first laid eyes on Roth's impressive book, illustrated by many of his own drawings, some of which were soon republished in L'Architecture Vivante and other magazines and journals. Le Corbusier, Pierre Jeanneret, Siegfried Giedion, and F. T. Gubler, head of the Swiss Werkbund, were en route to Stuttgart for their first visit to the Weissenhof Housing Exposition and associated German Werkbund Exhibition "Die Wohnung." Roth took the opportunity to show the master his stable design and photograph his boss holding one of the farm's newly born piglets.
Furniture design sketches by Mies van der Rohe, 1927. Letterhead design by Willi Baumeister.
While in Stuttgart, Le Corbusier approvingly viewed his houses, the rest of Weissenhof, and the accompanying Werkbund Exhibition. He also had a chance to commiserate with Mies van der Rohe and was impressed by his and Lily Reich's furniture and interior designs. Le Corbusier's League of Nations design was also on display with those of Hannes Meyer and Hans Witter, and Richard Neutra and R. M. Schindler at the "Die Wohnung" exhibition, which opened on July 27th. (Hines, p. 73)
Catalog for the Werkbund Ausstelung Die Wohnung, Stuttgart 1927.
All the architects participating in Die Wohnung exhibition were listed and their work was itemized in the catalog for the Die Wohnung Exhibition, which also included an architectural exhibition held in conjunction with Weissenhof. Le Corbusier was most mentioned with over 40 items listed in addition to his two houses at Weissenhof. Gropius had 35 items in the exhibition in addition to his Weissenhof work. Mies van der Rohe was next with over 10 items, plus his apartment building at Weissenhof and furniture stand at Die Wohnung shared with Lily Reich. Neutra had seven items listed, including three for his League of Nations Palace, which hung alongside the Le Corbusier & Pierre Jeanneret and Hannes Meyer & Hans Witwer entries. Albert Frey's colleagues from Brussels, Victor Bourgeois and J. J. Eggericx, were also represented. Bourgeois's Weissenhoff house also included artwork by his 7 Arts colleagues Oscar Jespers, Pierre Floquet, Karl Maes, and Willy Baumeister. Frank Lloyd Wright had four items that were not mentioned in Langmead.
Left: Poster for the Werkbund Exhibition "The Dwelling," Stuttgart, July-October 1927. Right: "The Dwelling " Exhibition, Main Hall, Stuttgart, 1927. From Lily Reich: Designer and Architect, by Matilda McQuaid, MOMA, 1996, p. 16.
Just back in Paris from Weissenhof, Le Corbusier was somewhat depressed by the criticism he received from the German press for shortcomings concerning lackluster interior decoration and home furnishings. He had just viewed, and been quite impressed with, new furniture by Mies van der Rohe and Lilly Reich, Marcel Breuer, Mart Stam, and J. J. P. Oud at the Werkbundausstellung Die Wohnung exhibition. He was also able to view at Die Wohnung a display of his League of Nations design entry alongside those of Hannes Meyer & Hans Witter, and Richard Neutra & R. M. Schindler, as discussed elsewhere herein.
"Die Wohnung," by Siegfried Giedion, Der Cicerone, Vol. XIX, No. 24, September 1927, pp. 759-762.
As promised in early September before accompanying Le Corbusier, Jeanneret, and Gubler to Stuttgart, Siegfried Giedion published the work of Le Corbusier and others at Weissenhof in Der Cicerone, where he was also named architectural editor for the magazine.
Left: "Special Number of the Flat Roof," Das Neue Frankfurt, October-December 1927, front cover. Right: Inaugural issue of Das Neue Frankfurt, October-November 1926, front cover.
Victor Bourgeois wrote to Joseph Gantner on November 1, 1927, relaying how impressed he was by his latest visit to Frankfurt while returning from Weissenhof. He also asked for extensive information he wanted to publish in 7 Arts, and a series of lectures he wanted to devote to 'Das Neue Frankfurt'. (Strauven, note 134, p. 164)
Poster for the Salon d'Automne, Grand Palais, Paris, November 5 to December 18, 1927.
On October 14, 1927, Le Corbusier was approached by a 24-year-old interior designer, Charlotte Perriand, looking for employment. Like Albert Frey, then back in Zurich saving money for his soon-to-be pilgrimage to apprentice with the master, her mind was set on working for no one but the modern genius after reading his Vers une architecture and L'Art décoratif d'aujourd'hui. She came to the atelier carrying her box of drawings and was given the brushoff after the interview with the "oafish" comment: "You know, we do not embroider cushions here." Hurt by the remark, Perriand shot back, "I'm exhibiting at the Salon d'Automne. If you change your mind... here is my address." (Barsac, pp. 68-70).
"Bar sous le toit" (Bar under the roof), Salon d'Automne, Grand Palais, Paris, November 5 to December 18, 1927. From Charlotte Perriand, Complete Works, Volume 1, 1903-1940, Jacques Barsac, Scheidegger & Spiess, Zurich, 2024, pp. 48-9.
In late 1927, Perriand was nearing completion on her own apartment at the Place Saint-Sulpice, elements of which also happened to be on display at the Salon d'Automne, thanks to the financial largesse of her much older British husband, Percy Scofield, whom she would divorce in 1930. After viewing her work at the Salon d'Automne, Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret immediately offered her a partnership position in the atelier, specifically for furniture and home furnishings, and that she should also join the studio as a student of architecture. No one on the little team in the atelier could take charge of developing the required new furniture for the Villa La Roche, Villa Church, and other projects, either on or soon to be on the drawing boards. The twenty-five-year-old Perriand was the perfect choice.
Le Corbusier, Charlotte Perriand, interior decorator Djo Bourgeois, Jean Fouuuuquet, and Percy Scofield (in back) in the place Saint-Sulpice apartment-studio, 1928. Photograph by Pierre Jeanneret. (Barsac, p. 68).
Left: Charlotte Perriand and Le Corbusier by the window at the Bar sous le toit (Bar under the roof), 1928. Photograph by Pierre Jeanneret. (McGuirk, p. 87). Right: Charlotte Perriand with Le Corbusier's hands holding a plate as a halo, 1928. Photograph by Pierre Jeanneret. (Barsac, p. 69).
Left: Charlotte Perriand in her Place Saint-Sulpice apartment-studio, Paris, 1928. Right: Perriand dining room, Place St. Sulpice apartment-studio, 1928. (Barsac, p. 156).
Alfred Roth and Charlotte Perriand and her distinctive ball-bearing necklace in her apartment at Place Saint-Sulpice, Paris, 1928. Photographer likely Ernest Weissmann. From Charlotte Perriand, the Modern Life, edited by Justin McGuirk, Design Museum, London, 2021, p. 83. Right: Ernest Weissmann and Charlotte Perriand at her Saint-Sulpice apartment, Paris, 1928. Photographer likely Alfred Roth.
Alfred Roth visited Charlotte Perriand and her first husband, Percy Scofield, at her Saint-Sulpice apartment numerous times after returning from his Weissenhoff duties in Stuttgart. At her request, he gave her a few paid tutoring lessons in architecture to assist her in her furniture duties in the atelier, starting with the Villa La Roche and the Villa Church. (Roth, p. 47-7).
"A Villa in Vaucresson, Le Corbusier, architect" in "Tendencies of the School of Modern French Architecture," by Michel Roux-Spitz and Jean Porcher, Architectural Record, April 1929, p. 333.
An article on French modern architecture appeared in the April 1929 issue of Architectural Record. In it, the author tried to describe Le Corbusier's theory, "The House is a Machine for Dwelling In."
"But of modern man and modern life, [Le Corbusier] has an exaggerated opinion. According to him, the one thing characteristic of out times is - the Machine. The machine is free from all attachment to a useless past is the perfect expression of modern man; it is practical, exactly ftted to its role, always there."
Left: "Where does architecture begin?" by Le Corbusier, Die Form, Vol. 4, No. 7, April 1, 1929, pp. 180-1. Right: Le Corbusier et Pierre Jeanneret, Duixeme Serie, Editions Albert Morance, Paris, May 30, 1929.
Eugenie Savoye meeting with Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret at 35 Rue de Sevres to discuss a commission for what would become the Villa Savoye. June 8, 1928. Illustration by Jean Philippe Delhomme from The Sunny Days of Villa Savoye by Jean-Philippe Delhomme and Jean-Marc Savoye, Birkhauser, Basel, 2015, p. 9.
Madame Savoye made an appointment to visit Le Corbusier and Jeanneret at 35 Rue de Sevres on June 8, 1928. Their initial discussions ultimately led to a commission that began in earnest about the time Albert Frey entered the atelier. Le Corbusier and the Savoyes went through three iterations of plans before settling on one they could afford, and the construction contract was signed in late December. (Delhomme, p. 16)
Left: Renderings of Villa Savoye, Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret, L'Architecture Vivante, Spring and Summer, 1929. Right: Villa Savoye construction details drawn by Albert Frey, ca. 1929. (Rosa, p. 16).
Left: "Ein Wohnhausblock in Los Angeles by Richard Neutra, Architect," Die Form, Vol. 4, No. 5, March 1, 1929, pp. 112-115. Right: "Das Flachdach in Frankreich," by Roger Ginsburger, Die Form, Vol. 4, No. 6, March 15, 1929, pp. 133-137.
While Frey was working on Villa Savoye, he was also viewing his mentor's work in Die Form, the Villas Stein and Church, published shortly after Richard Neutra's apartments in Hollywood.
Left: Villa Savoye construction details drawn by Albert Frey, ca. 1929. (Rosa, p. 16). Right: Detail plan of the mechanical device for opening the salon window, February-March 1929, [drawn by Albert Frey]. FLC 19637. From The Villas of Le Corbusier 1920-1930, by Tim Benton, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1987, p. 204.
Frey recalled working closely with Pierre Jeanneret, designing and developing standardized details for the windows and built-in cabinetry used in the Villa Savoye. One innovative detail they developed together was made of an S-shaped plate that would tighten the window in place and was attached to a lever with a small ball designed to fit into the palm of the hand. The cabinetry Frey designed consisted of a long horizontal unit, under a horizontal band of windows, with very thin sliding doors, gauged aluminum, the length of which was determined by the windows above. The handles were made of metal tubing with a small ball attached, similar to the ball on the windows. This implied that anything meant to be moved by hand would have the same form, whether it was used for opening a door, a window, or a cabinet. (Rosa, p. 16).
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Villa Savoye construction details drawn by Albert Frey ca. 1929. (Rosa, p. 16). Right: Kunio Maekawa and Josep Lluis Sert are pictured on the scaffolding at the Villa Savoye job site. To their left, Weissmann is filming with his camera, and Norman Rice is taking the photo. (Boone, p. 120).
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Left: Drawing of details no. 2133, Villa Savoye structural details drawn by Albert Frey, May 10, 1929. (Boone, p. 121). Right: Villa Savoye detail plan and section of streamlined concert piloti, drawn by Albert Frey, April-June 1929, FLC 19531.
Albert Frey drew many structural drawings for the Villa Savoye, but it is unclear whether he ever viewed the building site in person. He did not make the trip with Josep Lluis Sert, Ernest Weissmann, Kunio Maekawa, and newcomer Norman Rice in Sert's Rolls-Royce on May 14, 1929, when Weissmann filmed the site for the first time, and he had left the atelier by the time of Weissmann's next three visits.
Left: Pierre Jeanneret explaining to the general contractor E. Cormier on July 23, 1929, information on the above left plan drawn by Albert Frey, two weeks after he had left the atelier. (Boone, p. 139). Right: Drawing of details no. 2137 drawn by Albert Frey on May 24, 1929. (Boone, Veronique, "Exploring the Visual Material Within the Process of the Villa Savoye," Veronique Boone and Benediste Gandini, Building Knowledge, Constructing Histories, Proceedings of the 6th International Congress of Construction History, CRC Press/Bakema, Leiden, 2018, pp. 373-382.
Weissmann photographed the job site again on July 23rd, just after finishing the canvas diorama for the Cité Mondiale and the drawings of its display shed mentioned elsewhere herein. Depleted of funds, Albert Frey left the atelier on July 14th to vacation in Toulon on the Mediterranean coast with his family and Kunio Maekawa. He returned to Brussels for another stint with Eggericx & Verwilghen in September, this time as their lead designer. (Rosa, p. 17).
Villa Savoye, Poissy, plan and elevation of double lodge for gardener and chauffeur, May 7, 1929. (Benton, p. 205).
The Villa Savoye gardener's house elevations and floor plan were drawn on May 7, 1929. Based on the date, they were likely drawn by Albert Frey, who was deeply immersed in the project drawings at the time.
Living room and terrace, Villa Savoye, Poissy, 1929, Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret, architects. (Benton, p. 206).
One of the most significant contributions Frey made while at the atelier was his work on the Villa Savoye. He prepared many of the construction drawings for the house, from the tile bathroom chaise he collaborated on with Charlotte Perriand, to details for the sliding glass doors that open onto the terrace from the living room. Unusual at the time, the door was hung from a track on the ceiling, an idea Frey borrowed from Sweet's Catalog for sliding barn door hardware. The actual hardware for the door was custom-made in France. (Rosa, p. 16).
Left: Villa Savoye, May 1930. Photo by Siegfried Gideon. (Boone, p. 123). Right: Siegfried Giedion and his wife, Carola Weicker, happily posing in front of the Villa Savoye gardener's house. Photo by Ernest Weissman, May 30, 1930. (Boone, p. 147).
On Weissmann's last visit to the Villa Savoye, he accompanied Siegfried Giedion and his wife to photograph the completed project on May 30, 1930. They crossed the site together to fully admire the elevated "Box". (Boone, p. 146).
Kunio Maekawa and Charlotte Perriand at the atelier of Le Corbusier, Paris, 1928. (Teissonniere, p. 56).
J. J. Eggericx architecture class at La Cambre, 1930. Jean Canneel standing to the right of J. J. Eggericx. From La Cambre, 1928-1978, Editions AAM, Brussels, 1979, p. 175.
A twenty-five-year-old Jean Canneel-Claes, a student of J.J. Eggericx at La Cambre, approached Le Corbusier on April 29, 1929, to commission a house in Woluwe-St. Pierre, a suburb in east Brussels, was for him and his future wife. Cannel had witnessed the 1926 Le Corbusier lecture in Brussels, organized in 1926 by Victor Bourgeois. Albert Frey, having unwittingly attended the same Le Corbusier lecture, "Architecture-Mobilier- Ouvre d'Art," in Brussels on May 5, 1926, was a witness to Kunio Maekawa and Charlotte Perriand collaborating with Le Corbusier on the design of the Canneel Maison. (Strauven, p. 129).
Left: Maison Canneel, front elevation, Le Corbusier and P. Jeanneret, architects. Drawn by Kunio Maekawa. June 27, 1929. Right: Maison Canneel, living room interior, drawn by Charlotte Perriand, July 1, 1929. FLC.
That Canneel was able to hire Le Corbusier, one of the most prominent designers of the time, speaks of his economic class, his taste for risk, and his hunger for publicity. It is unclear whether or when Frey and Canneel discussed this coincidence, but it seems highly likely that they worked on at least one of Eggericx's projects together, as speculated elsewhere herein. (Imbert, p. 30).
Left: "Le Corbusier et la Loi Loucheur," by Le Corbusier, La Cite & Tekhne, May 1929, pp. 161-5. Right: Rendering and floor plan for Le Corbusier's Loucheur Houses. From Fondation Le Corbusier.
In May 1929, La Cité published an interview between George Charles and Le Corbusier explaining the difficulties of the law's requirements. In the article, Corbusier explained how Loucheur had to intervene to get his garden city, Pessac, a real laboratory of modernization, finally approved by the town council a full two years after completion. Albert Frey, Norman Rice, and Charlotte Perriand worked on many later schemes developed by Le Corbusier, one of the lesser-known involved a free-standing house on pilotis, the overall plan of which would later serve as a model for Kocher and Frey's 1932 Ralph-Barbarin House, Subsistence Farmsteads (project, 1934), and John Porter Clark House in Palm Springs in 1939. (Rosa, p. 17, and my "Schindler, Neutra, Kocher, Frey").
Norman Rice, an American from Philadelphia who arrived near the end of Frey's time at the atelier in May 1929, described his first visit to Le Corbusier's design studio:
"(Patent leather ladies' purses for sale at the building entrance - long, wide, dark corridor - dark stairs, the facing door. Nearly entire office visible at first sight - one long room, side of enclosed gallery overlooking interior court - about 80 by 15 feet, 15 feet high - two low homemade partitions - large front space, chair, pot belly stove, no window - his office 7'-4" by 7'-4", no window - drafting room, tall casement windows, pot belly stove - doormat insulated feet from marble floor in winter)." (Undated typescript (ca. 1930?), "I Remember 35 Rue de Sevres," by Norman N. Rice. Rice Collection, Architectural Archives, University of Pennsylvania).
The collaborators at the atelier in October 1929, from left to right: Eugene Rosenberg and another collaborator from Czechoslovakia, and the "Close" gang: Josep Lluis Sert, Kunio Maekawa, Norman Rice at the drawing table, and Ernest Weissmann. (Boone, p. 33)
Norman Rice fondly described the camaraderie in the atelier:
"It was a wonderful time - working, discussing, working, arguing, always about architecture, with him, between ourselves. First it was purgative - then stimulant, manna - then nutriment - often ambrosia. And we were in Paris! After several months, he took me to visit some houses - La Roche-Jeanneret, Garches. What a stunning revelation! Photographs did not, could not prepare me for it. The pictures showed baldness, emptiness. The houses displayed the richness of supreme artistry and elegance: the spaces and shapes overwhelmed me. This was IT." (Author's note: Albert Frey and Norman Rice would briefly work together in the office of Howe and Lescaze on the Christie-Forsythe Housing Project in 1931-2 after they both returned to America. See my "Neutra, Schindler, Kocher, Frey").
Left: Mundaneum by Paul Otlet and Le Corbusier, Union des Associations Internationales (UAI), Lebegue et Cie, Brussels, August 1928. Right: Cite Mondiale by Paul Otlet,
The atelier of Le Corbusier and Jeanneret realized two sets of plans for the Mundaneum project. After the first set in 1928, Otlet published Mundaneum on the Mondial City in which the plans of Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret were included. The plans were taken up again in February 1929 with Albert Frey's involvement resulting in the second publication. The atelier was thus working on the project with the hectic sequel of the competition for the League of Nations in the background, and the importance Le Corbusier attributed to the displaying of the Mundaneum project with a late diorama is likely influenced by these events.
Anticipating the 10th Assembly of the League of Nations at the end of summer 1929 in Geneva, which would include the laying of the foundation stone of the new headquarters in the Ariana Park, Paul Otlet insists on the importance of that event to claim their aspirations for the Mondial City. In addition to a petition and a congress of the Union of International Associations (UAI), Otlet planned from the spring of 1929 onwards an exhibition pavilion where a diorama, a model, and plans would show the urban league project to the congress members, the international members of the League of Nations, and the general public.
Left: The entire Le Corbusier atelier, Le Corbusier, Pierre Jeanneret, Charlotte Perriand, Josep Lluis Sert, Kunio Maekawa, and Norman Rice, at work on the Cité Mondiale diorama, Buttes Chaumont hangar, Paris, July 20-21, 1929. Photo by Ernest Weissmann. (Boone, p. 83). Right: Charlotte Perriand, always recognizable by her ball bearing necklace, walking on the diorama canvas. (Boone, p. 91).
During a hot weekend in late July, Le Corbusier, Pierre Jeanneret, and the entire atelier (minus Albert Frey, who had just left for Zurich) painted a giant 10 by 5 meters diorama in a Gaumont film-set studio at Buttes-Chaumont in Paris, presenting the urban design project of the Cité Mondiale, which was needed to be on display in Geneva by the end of July 1929. Ernest Weissmann documented the entire process with almost three minutes of film reel footage, which was a unique opportunity to grasp the enthusiasm and commitment of the young architects and their masters working together on a project considered of major importance. (Boone, pp 74-5).
Left: Plans for the pavilion for the Cité Mondiale diorama - drawn by Ernest Weissmann, on July 22, 1929, and immediately sent to Geneva. (Boone, p. 79). Right: Mondial Museum, Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret, L'Architecture Vivante, Summer 1929, p. 50.
Immediately after the weekend, Weissmann drew up the design of the pavilion in which the diorama with the plans of the Cité Mondiale was to be displayed. The plans of the pavilion, the diorama, and the plans to be exhibited were sent to Le Corbusier's Clarte client, builder Edmond Wanner in Geneva, as soon as the plans were finished by Weissmann. Le Corbusier and his wife, Yvonne, and Pierre Jeanneret left Paris for Piquey. They spent the holidays there until August 20th. Kunio Maekawa also left for a long holiday with Albert Frey and his family in the fishing village of Toulon near Marseilles. (Boone, p. 79; Rosa, p. 17).
Left: Helene de Mandrot, Le Corbusier, and Paul Otlet, on a bench overlooking Lake Geneva after visiting the diorama and explaining the project to Mme de Mandrot. (Boone, p. 81). Right: A photograph of the diorama while displayed curved, from the Swiss magazine L'Illustré. Photo by Kettle, Geneva. (Boone, p. 75).
The rest of the Geneva Mundaneum event was in the hands of Paul Otlet: to find the location for the pavilion, make contracts with the contractor to have the small pavilion built, curate all the material sent by Le Corbusier, host the congress of the UAI, and undertake all the necessary publicity.
The 10th Assembly of the League of Nations at the beginning of September was for Paul Otlet and Le Corbusier, who traveled to Geneva for the occasion, the opportunity to show the delegates the diorama and the plans for the Cité Mondiale. Le Corbusier met several personalities, among them, French politicians Louis Loucheur and Artiste Briand. Barely a week after he returned to Paris, he sailed for his Brazilian lecture tour, leaving the second session of CIAM totally in the hands of his trusted partner Pierre Jeanneret. (Boone, p. 80).
As Albert Frey was settling in for his second stint with Eggericx & Verwilghen in Brussels, Rice was helping the atelier to prepare for the second CIAM conference in Frankfurt:
"(Drawings of prefab Minimal House for exhibit at 2nd CIAM Congress - we all went to Frankfurt - met architects from all over Europe, - he was featured [even though he was on a lecture tour in Brazil] - also Gropius, Meyer, Stam, etc. - everyone so lively and eager about architecture, in French and in German - to Stuttgart where his two houses stood out against Mies and Oud - and back to Paris."
Left: Hannes Meyer and Hans Witter's design for the Palace of the League of Nations, published in 7 Arts, Vol. 6, No. 11, January 22, 1928. (Strauven, p. 149). Right: Front page of the thematic issue of Frankfurt, 7 Arts, Vol. 6, No. 24, May 20, 1928. (Strauven, p. 165).
The location of the second CIAM congress was most likely prearranged as a "mediating choice" by Bourgeois, who was the substitute moderator at La Sarraz after Karl Moser dropped out. Hannes Meyer had suggested Frankfurt to Bourgeois after viewing Ernst May's significant achievements in modern housing projects while on a visit to the nearby Weissenhof. Bourgeois and Meyer had also rendezvoused at Dessau in late June of 1927 for a joint trip to Frankfurt and Weissenhof. Bourgeois published Meyer and Witter's League of Nations project in his January 22, 1928 issue of 7 Arts and another full issue on the City of Frankfurt, a month before the inaugural CIAM congress at La Sarraz. All of this likely planted the seed in his mind to choose Frankfurt as the next CIAM venue. (Strauven, p. 164).
Left: Page from Charlotte Perriand's notebooks, "Seiges, Church" (seats), from Charlotte Perriand: The Modern Life, edited by Justin McGuirk, Design Museum, London, 2021, p. 63. Right: Le Corbusier, Pierre Jeanneret, Charlotte Perriand, first-floor library in the music pavilion of the Villa Church, 1928. Ibid., p. 26.
The second project where Le Corbusier used Perriand's work was for the Villa Church in 1928. Five separate pieces, including three chairs, a chaise lounge, and a table, were staged for the above photograph, which further announced her triumphant arrival at Corbusier's atelier. Albert Frey also had some minor involvement in the Villa Church, designing some cabinetry for the music room pavilion in collaboration with Perriand. (Rosa, p. 16).
Left: "Das Haus en 'Centrosoyuz' en Moscow", Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret, architects, Die Form, Vol. 4, No. 9, May 1, 1929, pp. 225-228. Right: "Wohnhaus in Ville-d'Avray", Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret, architects, Ibid., pp. 232-3.
Albert Frey must have been thrilled to have projects he worked on published so rapidly when he viewed the May 1st issue of Die Form, which contained Centrosoyuz, Villa Church, and Villa Stein in Garches. L'Architecture Vivante, Das Werk, Das Neue Frankfurt, and Cahiers d'Art also regularly published Le Corbusier's work.
Left: "Two Houses at Stuttgart," in "Architecture: The Expression of the Methods and Materials of Our Time," by Le Corbusier, Architectural Record, August 1929, p. 127. Right: "Palace of the Centrosoyuz in Moscow," Ibid., p. 124.
In response to a May 1928 request by Architectural Record editor A. Lawrence Kocher for an article with the suggested title, "Architecture: The Expression of the Methods and Materials of Our Time," Le Corbusier sent off the above-left article as he was preparing to sail to Brazil for a fall university lecture tour. The atelier had just completed a massive canvas diorama of the Mundaneum that was proposed to go on display in Geneva in August, near the original site of the League of Nations on Lake Geneva. (Author's note: Albert Frey, who had six months earlier spent some time on Centrosoyuz, had just left Corbusier's atelier for a hard-earned summer vacation with atelier mate Kunio Maekawa after completion of the Cité Mondiale diorama. He returned to Brussels in October as lead designer for Eggericx &Verwilghen. He desperately needed to save some money to finance his trip to America.
Left: Request addressed by MM. Le Corbusier and P. Jeanneret to the President and Members of the Council of the League of Nations, Paris, Imprimerie Union, 1928, 32 pp. Right:
"I have a furious rage against these bastards for what they have done and permitted to be done, and I am profoundly outraged and disturbed by the blinding desires for “justice” by which the comedy has been rigged. That I will not swallow. And when I think of the problem itself, handsome as it is; when I see, as I do this evening, for instance, the photos of the splendid site, then all over again I suffer fits of indignation, of imprecations against this huge coalition that has crushed us with weapons having nothing to do with architecture. Nothing to do with architecture. There is the entire drama. A work so majestic seems to me incapable of being achieved on the basis of so many dirty tricks, which have become flagrantly public. I do not expect an immediate vengeance on the part of heaven. But one may grant that the measure has been so forced that the evil will fall back upon itself. These people who are making the Palace are mountebanks, businessmen licking the boots of the Academy. Where is the lively, lofty, disinterested, passionate spirit that can carry out this task through an intense love of architecture? These people are "architects" in the dreadful sense of the word. And already they are fighting among themselves. Our time had not come, nor were we wanted! We were hated because we had raised ourselves to the highest degree of prominence." (Le Corbusier letter to mother, September 4, 1928 in Le Corbusier: A Life by Nicholas Fox Weber, Knopf, New York, 2008, p. 276).
"Barcelona 1929" Die Form, Vol. 4, No. 16, August 15, 1929, front cover. Right: "Two views of the Barcelona Pavilion," Mies van der Rohe, architect, Ibid., p. 427.
Albert Frey likely knew of the Barcelona Exposition because of its widespread publication throughout Europe in the summer of 1929. Mies van der Rohe's pavilion made a deep impression because his personal residence, built in Palm Springs, California, eleven years later, exhibited many similar elements.
Venue of CIAM II, Palmengarten, Frankfurt, October 24-29, 1929. From the internet.
Le Corbusier missed the second CIAM conference in late October 1929 due to his Brazilian lecture tour, but Pierre Jeanneret took Charlotte Perriand, Ernest Weissmann, Kunio Maekawa, Josep Lluis Sert, and Norman Rice to Frankfurt, where, as Norman Rice wrote,
" - we met architects from all over Europe - [Corbusier] was featured - also Gropius, Stam, Meyer, etc. - everyone so lively and eager about architecture, in French and in German - to Stuttgart where his two houses stood out against Mies and Oud - and back to Paris." (From "I Remember 35 Rue de Sevres," by Norman Rice, nd., Architectural Archives, University of ennsylvania, Normna Rice Collection).
Salon d'Automne 1929 catalogue and poster, Grand Palais, Paris, November 3 December 22, 1929.
Also, before leaving for Brazil, Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret collaborated with Charlotte Perriand to design and build a stand for the 1929 Salon d'Automne to be held at Paris's Grand Palais in December. 
From left to right: Unidentified man, Bruno Weil (director of Thonet Freres Paris), Charlotte Perriand, Pierre Jeanneret holding a sign with Le Corbusier's name on it, and Percy Scofield celebrate Thonet's agreement to finance the stand at the Salon d'Automne as well as furniture production in the absence of Le Corbusier. Stand Club, November 14, 1929. (Barsac, p. 156).
When no financing for a Loucheur exhibition could be found in the spring, contact was made with the Viennese furniture maker Thonet in July, and negotiations to manufacture Perriand's furniture and an exhibition stand at the fall Salon d'Automne began. Pierre Jeanneret took the entire atelier to Frankfurt the week of October 26th for the second CIAM conference and Weisenhof. A decision was finally reached on November 14th, eleven days after the Salon officially opened. A memorable three-week atelier charette led by Perriand and Jeanneret enabled the completion of the design and installation of the exhibition stand on December 10th, just twelve days before the closure of the Salon. It was a model of 90 sq. meters for three occupants, a long way from the economic constraints of inexpensive housing for workers like the Loucheur houses, because the fabrication for the furniture and storage cabinets turned out to be very expensive and complex. (Barsac, p. 142).
"Un equipment interieur d'une habitation," Le Corbusier, Pierre Jeanneret, Charlotte Perriand, Salon d'Automne, 1929. Entrance to the Stand. (Barsac, p. 144).
The Salon d'Automne stand was the first large-scale display of Perriand's new furniture and interior design skills that would begin to populate all of Le Corbusier's projects from then on. Le Corbusier finally achieved a competitive level with van der Rohe and Lily Reich. The entrance to the stand was plastered with photos of recent projects by the atelier, reminiscent of a barricade around a new construction site advertising what is to come. (Barsac, p. 144).
Left: Invitation by Le Corbusier, Pierre Jeanneret, and Charlotte Perriand to the opening of the stand Un Equipment interieur d'une habitation, Salone d'Automne, Grand Palai, Paris, December 10, 1929. ((Barsac, p. 142). Right: Ibid. (Barsac, p. 145).
Left: "Oeuvres Recentes de Le Corbusier et P. Jeanneret," L'Architecture Vivante, August 1929. Front cover. Right: "Loi Loucheur, establissant un Programme de Construction d'Habitations a bon marche et de Logements," Chiron, Paris, 1928. Front cover.
The month after Albert Frey left Le Corbusier's Atelier to return to Brussels as chief designer for Eggericx &Verwilghen, L'Architecture Vivante published an issue totally devoted to the work of Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret. The issue began with an explanation of the new Loucheur Law, which established a construction program for low-cost housing and accommodation to remedy the housing crisis. The Loucheur Maisons was the only project that Frey contributed to sporadically throughout his stay in Paris.
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Left:Befreites Wohnen by Siegfried Giedion, Orell Fussli Verlag, Zurich, 1929. Right: Exhibition poster for "Die Wohnung fur das Existenzminimum (the Dwelling for Minimum Existence)" CIAM II, Frankfurt, October 26 to November 10, 1929.
The theme for the second CIAM conference in Frankfurt was minimum low-cost housing. Giedion compiled Befreites Wohnen, anticipating Frankfurt, where he was the reigning Secretary General. If so, he would have again been exposed to Richard Neutra's Jardinette Apartments, built in Hollywood in 1927. (Author's note: William Lescaze played a part in Neutra's work being published in Giedion's Befreites Wohnen. See my "A. Lawrence Kocher, Architectural Record, Richard Neutra, R. M. Schindler, Frank Lloyd Wright, Albert Frey").
The 1929 conference of the Congrès International d’Architecture Moderne (CIAM) focused international attention on Frankfurt’s ambitious housing program and on international attempts to define the minimum habitable dwelling. Siegfried Giedion slapped together a book, Befrietes Wohnen, which he was able to get published just two weeks before the event. The "Die Wohnung fur das Existenzminimum" exhibition poster advertised an exhibition of plans that addressed the conference theme, submitted by modernist delegates from many different countries, all drawn to the same scale. Both Giedion's book and the conference publication included illustrations and a floor plan of Richard Neutra's Jardinette Apartments.
Left: Die Wohnung fur das Existenzminimum, edited by International Congress for New Building, Julius Hoffmann, Stuttgart, 1930. Right: Ibid., CIRPAC organization chart, delegate list, p. 43.
CIAM published its proceedings for the second congress in Stuttgart early the following year. The conference proceedings listed the CIRPAC officers as Karl Moser, President, Victor Bourgeois and Ernst May, Vice Presidents, and Siegfried Giedion as Secretary General. Richard Neutra and Knud Lonberg-Holm were listed as the official delegates for America, and Victor Bourgeois and Raphael Verwilghen from Brussels were the official Belgian delegates. Victor Bourgeois led the planning effort for the third conference to be held in Brussels in November 1930, as it was also Belgium's 100th anniversary of its independence. Assisting Bourgeois were his fellow La Cambre professors and Albert Frey's new employers, J. J. Eggericx and Raphael Verwilghen, and others.
"Die Wohnung für das Existenzminimum" - (Minimum Housing), is both the theme of the congress and the accompanying exhibition, which is devoted to the achievements of the city of Frankfurt, of which one of the most endearing personalities of modern architecture, E. May, has been the chief architect since 1925." (La Cambre et Architecture, by Jacques Aron, Pierre Mardaga, Liege, 1982, p. 70).
Left: Die Wohnung Exhibition, Frankfurt, October 26-November 3, 1929. Right: Maisons Loucheur, Le Corbusier, and Pierre Jeanerret, architects, drawn by Kunio Maekawa, October 3, 1929. (Barsac, p. 122).
Albert Frey was back in Brussels during the Frankfurt CIAM convention, and thus missed reuniting with his old Le Corbusier atelier mates. He did, however, prepare some work for Eggericx to present in Frankfurt. Eggericx & Verwilghen, with Victor Bourgeois, were founding members of the Belgian section for the October-November proceedings in Frankfurt. As their then-chief designer, Albert Frey prepared the drawings below for them to present at the conference. He familiarized himself with the Declaration de La Sarraz, a manifesto prepared and signed as a result of the inaugural conference. Frey had spent a significant part of his time in Le Corbusier's atelier working on his Loi Loucheur minimal house visions; thus, he was perfectly aligned to design something meaningful for Eggericx & Verwilghen to present at Frankfurt. (Culot, pp. 86-7).
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Elevation and plan for an apartment building on pilotis, Le Logis, Watermael-Boittsfort, Brussels, 1929, J.-J. Eggericx, architect. Drawn by Albert Frey, 1929. (Culot, p. 222).
Eggericx presented Frey's drawings of the above apartments on pilotis at CIAM II in Frankfurt, exhibiting a perfect application of Le Corbusier's "Five Points" of architecture. He "received very good comments on the project," even though it was never built or published. (Culot, p. 222).
The faculty of Henry Van de Velde's Superior Institute of Decorative Arts (aka La Cambre), 1928, Top center, Louis Van der Swaelman, to his left: Oscar Jespers, to his left: Victor Bourgeois, front with folded arms, Henry Van de Velde
While Albert Frey was in Zurich and Paris, Henry Van de Velde was busy forming a Bauhaus-like design school in Brussels, La Cambre, in May of 1927. Louis Van der Swaelman and Victor Bourgeois were early faculty hires, soon to be followed by Frey's employers, J. J. Eggericx and Raphaël Verwilghen, in 1928-29.
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Left: "Raphael Verwilghe, Urbanist, Au Congo," by Louis Van der Swaelman, La Cité, Vol. VII, No. 8, January 1929, pp. 101-105. Right: Housing development in Bukave drawn by Albert Frey, ca. 1929-30. (Rosa, p. 18).
The January 1929 issue of La Cité by Louis Van der Swaelman reported on Raphael Verwilghen's trip to the Belgian Congo to lay out urban plans for the regions of Bakavu and Uvira. Van der Swaeman opined, "We believe we are not betraying anyone by saying that this is the first time that, during half a century of 'colonization,' we have started at the beginning in terms of urbanization and planning in the Congo."
When Verwilghen returned to Brussels later that year, he collaborated with his newly returned lead designer, Albert Frey, to prepare drawings of typical housing developments and urban layout plans. Frey did not leave Le Corbusier's atelier until July 14th before returning to Brussels in September.
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Left: Urban plan for Bukavu, Raphael Verwilghen, architect, drawn by Albert Frey. (Rosa, p. 18). Right: Bukavu Housing Development, Raphael Verwilghen, architect, drawn by Albert Frey. Ibid.
"Architecture in Belgium, A Bourgeois Building in Brussels," La Cité, Vol. VIII, No. 3, September 1929, pp. 31-35.
Victor Bourgeois took advantage of his friendship with Eggericx and Verwilghen and their recent joining him on the faculty at La Cambre to publish his recently completed Taelemans Residence at the beginning of the school year.
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Le Logis, project for an apartment building on stilts, J. J. Eggericx, architect, drawn by Albert Frey, Place des Muscaris, Watermael-Boitsfort, 1929, elevation and plan. (Culot, p. 222).
In addition to his work for Verwilghen in the Congo, Frey collaborated with Eggericx on low-cost minimum housing concepts that fell within the theme to present at the CIAM II conference in Frankfurt. Eggericx and Verwilghen joined Victor Bourgeois and others to form the core of the Belgian section of CIAM. Eggericx presented a similar model of two-apartment houses at CIAM III in Brussels after Frey's departure to America.
Poster for "Die Wohnung fur das Existenzminimum" exhibition, Frankfurt, October 26 to November 10, 1929, designed by Hans Leistitkow. From the Museum of Modern Art.
The second International Congress of Modern Architecture (CIAM II) was announced in the September and November issues of La Cité. The Hans Leistikow poster for the exhibition accompanying the conference used the same design as the book cover for the conference proceedings. In the February 1930 issue of La Cité, Victor Bourgeois recapped the entire conference in a nicely edited fourteen-page article covering the basic elements of the minimum house and its organization. It was a reprint of his contribution to Der Wohnung fur das Existenzminimum. ("L'Programme de l'habitation minimum, II CIAM, Frankfurt-sur-Main, October 24-26, 1929, La Cité, Vol. 8, No. 8, pp. 115-129).
Left: La Cambre faculty, 1929. Raphael Verwilghen and Victor Bourgeois are on the left.; J. J. Eggericx and Oscar Jespers, second and third from the right. (Culot, p. 312). Right: J. J. Eggericx architecture class at La Cambre. J. J. Eggericx and Jean Canneel both wearing knickers, 4th and 5th from the right. From La Cambre 1928-78, p. 175.
While Eggericx & Verwilghen and Victor Bourgeois were in Frankfurt attending CIAM II, Albert Frey was perhaps substituting for Eggericx at La Cambre. In any event, he likely collaborated with Eggericx's class in the design of the Sphinx for the Antwerp Exposition discussed later below.
Left: "The Second International Conference of Modern Architecture, Frankfurt a Main, August 24 - October 16, 1929," La Cité, Vol. 8, No. 5, November 1929, pp. 61-66. Right: "House and Studio for Sculptor Oscar Jespers, Brussels, Architect Victor Bourgeois, La Cité, Ibid., pp. 67-70.
The November 1929 issue of La Cité led article summarized the proceedings of the second CIAM conference in Frankfurt, focusing on the activities of the Belgian members, calling out the work of Victor Bourgeois, J. J. Eggericx, Raphaël Verwilghen, and a few others. The very next article illustrated the fine combination of residence and sculpture studio Bourgeois designed for fellow La Cambre professor Oscar Jespers. Some sculpture of Jespers was used to decorate the Bourgeois-designed Dr. Boll residence in the Weissenhofsiedlung in Stuttgart during the summer of 1927, as mentioned elsewhere herein.
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Left and Right "House and Studio for Sculptor Oscar Jespers, Brussels, Architect Victor Bourgeois, La Cité, Vol. 8, No. 5, November 1929, pp. 67-70
As previously mentioned, Albert Frey was a colleague of Bourgeois through his connection with Eggericx & Verwilghen. Bourgeois, Eggericx, and Verwilghen became professors at Le Cambre through their friendship with Henry Van de Velde. Oscar Jespers also taught sculpture at La Cambre and commissioned Bourgeois to design and build him the above house studio. Jean Canneel-Claes, also the son of a sculptor, was a student of Eggericx, who almost certainly attended events at Jespers' new studio. Albert Frey was still in the Le Corbusier atelier when Canneel's house was designed in June and July of 1929 and almost certainly would have witnessed its design, especially since his friend Kunio Maekawa and Charlotte Perriand collaborated with Le Corbusier on its design.
"Dedicated to the Memory of Louis Van der Swaelman," La Cité, Vol. VIII, No. 6, December 1929, pp. 77-100.
The December 1929 issue of La Cité was completely dedicated to the passing of the revered Louis Van der Swaelmen, who was a fellow professor at Henry Van de Velde's La Cambre with Eggericx & Verwilghen, Victor Bourgeois, Oscar Jespers, and others. La Cité led off with a heartfelt obituary by La Cambre director Henry Van de Velde, followed by Van der Swaelmen's career highlights, including his work with Eggericx & Verwilghen at Le Logis and Victor Bourgeois at La Cité Moderne. Albert Frey most likely would have attended his funeral with his employers. The issue ended with an announcement that CIAM II would be reported in the next issue.
The January 1930 issue led off with the "Meeting of the Commission Elected by the Congress for the Planning of the Third Congress 1930." The planning for CIAM III in Brussels would be headed by President Karl Moser of Zurich, Vice Presidents Ernst May of Stuttgart, and Victor Bourgeois of Belgium. A commission composed of architects Bourgeois, Stam, Henvaux, and Verwilghen was charged with the selection of reports submitted to be presented in Brussels. Any correspondence related to the agenda of the conference was directed to be sent to the secretariat (Siegfried Giedion) in Zurich.
Left: The cover of Precisions, sure un état de l'architecture et de l'urbansime (Details on the Current State of Architecture and Urban Planning), by Le Corbusier, Cret Editions, Paris, 1930. Right: "Villa Savoye," by Le Corbusier and P. Jeanneret, Poissy, 1930, Precisions, Paris, 1930, p. 137.
At about the same time, Le Corbusier was actively compiling his book Precisions, a report of his lecture tour in Brazil in late 1929. He also included plans of the modern house (Villa Savoye), modern furniture, the Palace of the League of Nations, Centrosoyuz in Moscow, the Cité Mondiale in Geneva, and the Plan Voisin in Paris among the 10 lectures he presented between October 3rd and 19th. At the end of the series, Le Corbusier opined:
"The series ended. I was asked to leave a useful trace of it. I never before had the opportunity to express myself so fully. I was happy to be able to present precise facts, but nevertheless at every lecture, time was at my heels; I could have given a hundred lectures! ... At the end of the lecture series, in which I had wandered over the paths of architecture, the idea of setting down the web of my ideas for an unknown reader appealed to me. It is around these drawings, reproduced here, that I shall compose my Buenos Aires song." (Ibid., pp. 20-21).
Left: Le Corbusier at his work table in his apartment on Rue Jacob, Paris, ca. 1930. (De Smet, frontispiece). Right: "2nd International Congress of Modern Architecture, Report by Messrs Le Corbusier and P. Jeanneret, architects in Paris. Analysis of the Fundamental Problem of the Minimum House," La Cité, Vol. VIII, No. 7, January 1930, pp. 101-104.
Even though Le Corbusier was not in attendance at CIAM II in Stuttgart, he and Pierre Jeanneret contributed a 4-page article to La Cité, "Analysis of the Fundamental Elements of the 'Minimum House' Problem," which focused on the importance of standardization, industrialization, and Taylorization. The article described what Le Corbusier had learned from his atelier's last year-and-a-half's work on the design of Maisons Locheur, including Albert Frey's time spent on the same before he returned to Brussels in September. Like Victor Bourgeois's article the next month, it was a reprint of his contribution to the conference proceedings published by Giedion under the title Die Wohnung fur das Existenzminimum.
Left: "Statutes of the Association 'The International Association, 'The International Congress of Modern Architecture (CIAM) Acquired in Frankfurt, October 26, 1929," La Cité, Vol. 8, No. 7, January 1930, p. 98. Right: "Meeting of the Commission elected by the Congress for the establishment of the program of the Third Congress, 1930," Ibid., p. 99.
Earlier in the same issue were two articles, likely by Victor Bourgeois, regarding the new architectural organization CIAM inaugurated in La Sarraz in June 1928. The first delineated CIAM's organizing principles, agreed to at the second conference in Frankfurt, on October 26, 1929. The second article reported on the results of a meeting of the planning committee on February 3rd in Paris, establishing the location of the third annual conference for Brussels in October. Those in attendance included Victor Bourgeois (Belgium), Le Corbusier (Paris), Mart Stam (Frankfurt-Rotterdam, Hans Schmidt (Bay), and secretary Siegfried Giedion (Zurich). The architects Ernst May (Frankfurt) and Walter Gropius (Berlin) excused themselves.
Left: Axonometric drawing Floreal, Watermael-Boitsfort, J. J. Eggericx, architect, drawn by Albert Frey, 1929. (Culot, p. 138). Right: Floreal, The Plateau, project of apartment buildings on pilotis, J. J. Eggericx, architect, 1929, model of a housing block and axonometric view. Model and drawing by Albert Frey. (Culot, p. 87).
Eggericx had to have welcomed and been pleased with the fresh Corbusian philosophy that his new lead designer, Albert Frey, brought with him from Paris in September 1929, especially when he saw his proposal for an addition to the Floréal plateau. The solution of placing the flat-roofed buildings on pilotis was profoundly different from the small houses with pitched roofs, which he had provided for the two garden cities during Frey's first stint in the office. Frey used Le Corbusier's "Five Points of a New Architecture" that he had published at Weissenhof, with the pilotis allowing the space taken up by the house on the underside to be recovered; the roof terraces to restore to the open air the land surface occupied by the buildings; the open room plans; the strip windows; and the free, non-load bearing facades. Eggericx's Corbusian project was never realized. The economic crisis of the 1930s made Société Floréal's budget precarious, and it could no longer be built. (Culot, p.138).
Le Corbusier, Complete Works 1910-1929, edited by Oscar Stonorov and Willi Boesiger, Girsberger, Zurich, 1929.
An ad announcing the pre-Christmas publication of Le Corbusier Complete Works, 1910-1929, appeared in the November 1929 issue of Das Neue Frankfurt, which also included an article by editor Joseph Gantner reporting on the activities of the second CIAM conference in Frankfurt. One of the benefits Albert Frey enjoyed working at the atelier of Le Corbusier was seeing the projects on which he worked soon thereafter being widely published in both architectural journals and books. For example, everything he was involved in ended up being compiled in the first volume of Le Corbusier's complete works, which hit the bookstores before Christmas in 1929. In it were many projects worked on by Frey, including Villa Church, Centrosoyuz, Maisons Loucheur, Villa Savoye, League of Nations, Mundaneum, as well as the Maison Canneel, which was worked on by his friend Kunio Maekawa.
Left: Amerika, Neues Bauen iner Welt 2, by Richard Neutra, Schroll, Wien, 1930. Right: Anton Schroll ad for Neues Bauen series, Russland by El Lissitzky, Amerika by Richard Neutra, and Frankreich by Roger Ginsburger, in Das Neue Frankfurt, January 1930.
Richard Neutra's second book, Amerika, was published to much fanfare in January 1930 and
only provided further inspiration for Albert Frey's move to the U.S. after he certainly viewed it when it hit the bookstores.
Ein Amerikanischer Flughafen (An American Airport), by Harwell Hamilton Harris, Die Form, Vol. 5, No. 7, April 1, 1930, pp. 184-5.
Harwell Hamilton Harris, one of Richard Neutra's 1929-30 students at Los Angeles's Academy of Modern Art, submitted an article on a fictitious airport for Neutra's 'Rush City', which was slated to be part of Neutra's presentation at the CIAM III conference in Brussels. This was also part of Neutra's strategic publicity campaign in preparation for his grand entrance onto the European scene in an important leg of his world lecture tour, which started in Japan in May and June. Another of his students, Willard Morgan, published an article on drive-in markets, and he published Amerika in January. (See my "The Foundations of Los Angeles Modernism: Richard Neutra's Mod Squad").
Left: Exhibition catalogue for Exposition Internationale, Anvers, 1930. Right: "Exposition Internationale d'Anvers, 1930" map showing the construction made with Belvedere bricks. Eggericx's Sphinx is left of center.
During this period, Albert Frey collaborated in some of Eggericx's La Cambre class projects, most notably the Sphinx for the 1930 Antwerp Exposition, the location of which is shown just left of center on the above map. At the initiative of Clément Houben, the Belgian representative of Belvédère Bricks and Sphinx Ceramic Tiles, Egericx was commissioned with the construction of the Sphinx Pavilion at the Antwerp Exhibition, in which he demonstrated different possibilities for using these materials in a complex scenography of textures and colors" (Culot, p. 189).
Left: "Antwerp 1930: Exterieur of Pavilion Sphinx," J. J. Eggericx. (Culot, p. 182). Right: Interior of Pavilion Sphinx, Antwerp International Exposition, 1930, J. J. Eggericx, architect. (Culot, p. 184).
Eggericx undoubtedly used Albert Frey in some fashion in the design and construction of the Pavilion. Eggericx received a medal and a diploma of honor for receiving third prize overall from the exhibition committee. (Culot, p. 184).
Left: Liege International Exposition, Liege, Belgium, April-November 1930. Poster design by Henri Michel, 1930. Right: Economy duplex, front and rear facades and floor plans, J. J. Eggericx, architect, drawn by Albert Frey, International Exposition at Liege, 1930. (Culot, p. 233).
Victor Bourgeois and the Belgian division of CIAM had great hopes for the world exhibitions at both Antwerp and Liège. In this context, this group of modernists, headed by Bourgeois, approached several industrialists intending to build a 'rational garden district' in Liege, 'following lessons drawn from the Frankfurt congress (a kind of Weissenhof but smaller and more scientific)' as Bourgeois had written to Giedion in early April 1929. The purpose was to put up a rational district on the Plateau du Tribouillet, north of the city, one which, as reported by Paul Werrie, was to be given the name 'La Nouvelle Belgique'. (Strauven, note 143, p. 168).
Still busy with the Antwerp Sphinx Pavilion, Eggericx gave Albert Frey free rein to design the above-right duplex apartment project again using his Corbusian Maison Loucheur-type principles for J. J. Eggericx to construct at Liege. The two apartments on the ground floor consisted of an entrance serving all the rooms, a kitchen, a large common room, two bedrooms, and a bathroom. The two apartments on the upper floor are duplexes. They benefit from the same layout, to which two bedrooms and the roof terrace were added. (Culot, p. 223).
On March 21, 1930, Eggericx announced to the Liege organizers that he was not pursuing the project, partly because the proposed site did not suit him, but above all because his choice of the Parisian company La Maison Isotherme, 34 rue de Miromesnil, headed by the construction engineer R. Decourt and which proposed a lightweight metal construction system, was incompatible with the public tender imposed on him." (Culot, p. 189).
Left: Competition for the Telephone and Telegraph Authority (RTT) administration building. Drawn by Albert Frey, 1930. (Culot, p. 289). Right: Two sketches by Albert Frey for the acronym of the RTT competition, 1930. (Culot, p. 17).
In early 1930, the country of Belgium decided to separate the telegraph and telephone administration from the post office, creating the Régie des Télégraphes et Téléphones (RTT). As part of the new organization, the RTT needed a new administration building and held a competition for its design. Albert Frey entered and finished second in the competition.
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Le Logis, a large block of Trois Tilleuls, Watermael-Boitsfort. Photographer unknown. (Culot, p. 225).
Eggericx's large block at Trois Tilleuls, also in Watermael-Boitsfort, was likely the last project Albert Frey was involved in before leaving for America. The first block was a pure prism, five stories high. Only the second block, with its decreasing height going from seven to four stories, sees its geometry altered. The project lasted from 1929 to 1933. Unlike Fer-a-Cheval, the concrete structure is not covered with bricks but with a gray coating and has, as its only decorative elements, continuous cords over the entire facade, emphasizing the horizontality of the windows. (Culot, p. 225).
Left: Le Corbusier et Pierre Jeanneret, Duixeme Serie, Editions Albert Morance, Paris, May 30, 1929. Right: Le Corbusier et Pierre Jeanneret, Troiseme Serie, Ibid., 1930. (Both from "L'Architecture and Its Extraits" by Daniel Lawler in Studies in Bibliography, Vol. 60, edited by David L. Vander Muelen, University of Virginia Press, Charlottesville, 2018).
Left: Die Form, Vol. 5, No. 11/12, June 7, 1930, cover with a photo of the Paris German Werkbund Exhibition. Right: Walter and Ise Gropius with Le Corbusier in Paris, 1930, from Le Corbusier Le Grand, edited by Jean-Louis Cohen and Tim Benton, Phaidon, New York,2019, p. 187.
An exhibition sponsored by the German Werkbund in Paris in June 1930 gave Walter Gropius and Le Corbusier a chance to connect. June 1930 also marked the end of Norman Rice's time in Paris. His fond reminiscence of his time in the atelier ended with:
"[Corbusier} is quick and clear. His perception reveals the essence of things immediately, sometimes like a noiseless x-ray, sometimes like crashing lightning. His language is salient, rousing, sometimes poetic. He draws quickly, with the ease of great practice and knowledge. It is exhilarating to be with a great genius. He wrote something for me on the flyleaf of each of his three books. This I like the best:"Urbanism is ... always the individual man, at home, in the city, and he ought never be a slave or melancholy, but he should be strong, joyful, optimistic and enterprising. This is what should grow out of city planning."
Le CorbusierJune 1930 (From "I Remember 35 Rue de Sevres," by Norman Rice, n.d., Architectural Archives, University of Pennsylvania, Norman Rice Collection).
"Gesundheithaus in Kalifornien," Richard Neutra, architect, Die Form, Vol.5, No. 13, July 1, 1930, pp. 350-354.
As part of Richard Neutra's publicity blitz preparing for his grand entrance into the European modern architectural scene in the fall of 1930, he published his second book, America, in January, advertising it heavily in Das Neue Frankfurt for three months straight in July through September and published his Lovell Health House in Architecural Record in May, Die Form in July.
"How Small a House?" by Theodore Larson, Architectural Record, August 1930, pp. 131-2.
(Author's note: Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret authored a piece, "The Minimum House," which was included in Die Wohnung fur das Existenzminimum. (Barsac, note 143, p. 485).
Left: "The Minimal House," by Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret, by Norman Rice. Architectural Record, August 1930, p. 133-137. Right: Ibid., p. 134. (Drawing is by Kunio Maekawa on October 3, 1928, per Barsac, p. 122).
As Norman Rice left Le Corbusier's atelier in June 1930, he translated and submitted Le Corbusier's article "The Minimal House" to Kocher's Architectural Record. It directly followed Ted Larson's review of the second CIAM congress and immediately presaged Albert Frey's new position with Kocher and the design of the "Aluminaire House."
Left: "L'Immeuble a Appartements du 'Fer a Cheval,' Cite-Jardin "Floreal" a Boitsfort-Bruxelles," Architecte J.-J. Eggericx, La Cite, Vol. IX, No. 1, July-August 1930, pp. 2-16.
Eggericx's Fer-a-Cheval project was drawn up in 1925. The construction work, begun in 1926, was completed in 1928. It should be noted that the "Belvedere" architectural prize for 1929 was awarded to Eggericx for his "Fer à Cheval" building. Albert Frey worked on the construction drawings and details for garden cities Floreal and Fer a Cheval during his first stint with Eggericx & Verwilghen from September 1925 to February 1927. The detailed publication of Fer-a-Cheval in the July-August 1930 issue of La Cité honored Eggericx's Belvedere prize. It could be construed as a going-away present of sorts for Frey's work as "chef de atelier" during his second stint in the office between October 1929 to August 1930.
Albert Frey arrived at Ellis Island in New York Harbor, September 5, 1930. (Rosa, p. 26).
In early September, A. Lawrence Kocher received a commission to design a display for the 1931 Architectural and Decorative Arts Exposition, which coincided with the 50th anniversary of the New York Architectural League of New York. The importance of the exhibition demanded a much larger venue than the previous American Fine Arts Society Building on West 57th Street in New York City. (A. Lawrence Kocher, American Architect by Luis Pancorbo Crespo and Ines Martin Robles, Oro Editions, 2025, p. 15).
The idea for the house came about through a request from Walter T. Sweatt, codirector of the Architectural League and Allied Arts Exhibition, for whom Kocher and his previous partner, Gerhard Zeigler, had designed a display stand of an "architect's office with furniture" for the F. W. Dodge Corporation for the 1929 Architectural League exhibition. That project created a lot of excitement, and Sweatt was looking for something that would make the current show even more lively. Kocher suggested making a full-scale house that would use off-the-shelf, standardized parts.
Just days after brainstorming with Sweatt and receiving the commission from the Architectural League's administrators Harvey Wiley Corbett, Raymond Hood, and Ely Jacques Kahn, Kocher received a providential visit from a young Swiss architect who had just arrived from Zurich via Ellis Island. Albert Frey had been job hunting during his first week in the city, only interested in firms that were exhibiting modernist tendencies. Using American architectural magazines as a reference, Frey was aware of Kocher's recent trend toward publishing modern architecture and his recent publication of Le Corbusier and Jeanneret's "A Minimum House," of which he had similar Maison Loucheur design examples in his portfolio. This certainly attracted Kocher to tender a job offer. The Eggericx-Le Corbusier-trained designer happened to be in the right place at the right time, and thus, the 'Aluminaire House' was born. (Schwarting and Campani, pp.14, 46).
Unbeknownst to Frey, Raymond Hood and Kocher had been unsuccessfully trying to arrange an American exhibition and lecture tour for Le Corbusier since late 1929. Seemingly a match made in heaven, Kocher seized the opportunity to offer Frey employment. (Bacon, p. 27. See also my "Neutra, Schindler, Kocher, Frey").
Left: A. Lawrence Kocher Residence, 4 Park End Place, Forest Hills, New York. (Google Maps).
During the job interview, Kocher and Frey chatted about their and Le Corbusier's common Swiss ancestry. Likely not believing his good fortune, Kocher offered Frey a position for 25 dollars a week to work on the design for the upcoming Architectural League Exposition. The offer included meals and board with him and his wife and use of a workroom at their house on Park End Place in the Forest Hills neighborhood of Long Island. (Crespo, p. 17 and "Foreword by Alfred Frey in Architecture and the Decorative Arts, The A. Lawrence Kocher Collection of Books at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation by Cynthia Zignego Stiverson, Locust Hill Press, West Cornwall, CT, 1989, pp. xv-xx).
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Left: "Architect's Business Space," A. Lawrence Kocher and Gerhard Zeigler, architects, Architectural Record, September 1929, pp. 262-268.Right: "Metal Chairs" Le Corbusier, Jeanneret, and Perriand, in "What Metals to Use" by the Architectural Record research staff, Architectural Record, September 1930, pp. 206-214.
The idea for the house came about through a request from Walter T. Sweatt, codirector of the Architectural League and Allied Arts Exhibition, with whom he and his previous partner, Gerhard Zeigler, had designed a display booth of an "architect's office with furniture" for the F. W. Dodge Corporation for the 1929 Architectural League exhibition. That project created a lot of excitement, and Sweatt was looking for something that would make the current show even more lively. Kocher suggested making a full-scale house that would use off-the-shelf, standardized parts. The Eggericx-Le Corbusier-trained designer, Albert Frey, happened to be in the right place at the right time, and thus, the Aluminaire House was born. (Schwarting and Compani, pp.14, 46).
At his early September interview with Kocher Frey later remembered admiring the furniture in Kocher's office, relocated from the 1929 Grand Central Palace exhibition.
The same month, Kocher published "Metal Chairs," featuring the designs of Le Corbusier, Jeanneret, and Perriand from the previous November's Salon d'Automne in Paris. Frey would have undoubtedly shared with Kocher his collaborations with Charlotte Perriand and explained her importance to the atelier."Gerhard Zeigler, who had collaborated with Kocher on several projects, had left New York before I arrived. Zeigler and Kocher had designed a modern architect's office for the Architecture and Allied Arts Exposition at Grand Central Palace in the spring of 1929. The exhibit had attracted large crowds of visitors during the week-long event. I admired the practicability and novel design of the desk made of a chromium-plated steel frame with black "Bakelite" top and shelves, which now graced the office." (Stiverson, p. xv).
Left: "Announcement for the Fourth Biennial Architectural and Allied Arts Exposition Commemorating the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Architectural League of New York," by Raymond Hood, Architectural Record, Vol. 68, No. 4, October 1930, p. 31. (Repeated in the November issue, p. 28). Right: "Planeix House, Paris, Le Corbusier and P. Jeanneret, Architects, Ibid., p. 338.
In the October issue, Albert Frey's first full month on the job, A. Lawrence Kocher and Raymond Hood collaborated to announce the upcoming 50th anniversary of the Architectural League of New York at the Grand Central Palace. Kocher held high hopes that the announcement wording would soften up the product suppliers for donations and prominent builders to contribute gratis labor. The announcement ran again the following month.
Albert Frey was definitely excited to see the above right project by his former employer, Le Corbusier, in Knud Longberg-Holm's Technical News and Research article on 'Glass' in his partner's October 1930 issue of Architectural Record. The project was completed in 1928 before he arrived in Paris and was originally designed with pilotis before the final modifications pictured above were made, enclosing the ground floor, enabling two additional artist studios to generate rental income for the owner, artist Antonin Planeix. The house was completed the year before Frey arrived in Paris. The description of the article in the preview stated:
"This study illustrates the varied characteristics and physical properties of glass in its application to buildings and how glass may be used to best advantage on various types of construction. New glasses on the market, including ultraviolet ray glass, are discussed. Standards for judging the relative merits of various glasses are set up."
Lonberg-Holm also included photos of Walter Gropius's Bauhaus in Dessau, Mies van der Rohe's unbuilt glass office tower model, storefronts in Holland by J. J. P. Oud, and the soon-to-be Richard Neutra patron Cees Van Der Leuw's personal residence in Rotterdam. (Author's note: Frey had just moved in with Kocher at Forest Hills on Long Island and was already hard at work on the design of the Alumuinaire House. See also in my "Kocher, Neutra, Schindler, Frey").
Raymond Hood tried unsuccessfully to invite Le Corbusier to America in late 1929 to exhibit his work at the 1930 Architectural League Exhibition, to possibly be followed by a lecture tour. In Brazil for a lecture tour, Le Corbusier was unable to respond until the first week of January. He expressed a desire to have his plans and diorama for the Cité Mondiale for Geneva make an American tour and even told his New York publisher, Joseph Brewer, of the proposed trip and his plans for a "book on American Architecture" after his trip. He sent his letter of acceptance too late for the League to consider it. In his response, Hood replied (I have always been a great admirer") and expressed "a very great personal interest to try to arrange to meet you." (Bacon, p. 26).
Left: Albert Frey drew an early design sketch of the 'Aluminaire House' on October 4, 1930. (Schwarting and Campani, p. 32). Right: Roof terrace views drawn by Albert Frey on October 6, 1930. Ibid., p. 32.
Albert Frey settled into his new quarters on Long Island and the Architectural Record office in Manhattan, and by early October, his vision for "Aluminaire" began to come to life. All through October and November, he sketched individual room concepts and layouts.
"The Country House," by Howard Fisher, Architectural Record, November 1930, pp. 363-385.
Kocher entrusted new assistant editor Howard Fisher to arrange the annual November 'Country House' number. He introduced the houses with a 22-page introduction illustrated with two photos of Le Corbusier's Villa Church at Ville d'Avray.
Encouraged by Le Corbusier's interest in an American tour, both Raymond Hood and Lawrence Kocher tried unsuccessfully throughout 1930 to arrange a lecture tour. In early January 1931, Kocher finally conveyed to Le Corbusier that, due to economic conditions following the Wall Street crash, the Architectural League, Columbia University, and a committee hoping to sponsor the lectures could not secure the necessary funds, and expressed regret that "American architects had not yet understood the importance of your visit." (Letter from Kocher to Le Corbusier, January 5, 1931. Bacon, p. 27).
Frey wrote to Le Corbusier shortly thereafter, sending words of encouragement, casting himself and Kocher among his followers in America. Frey Described their plans to construct a house for the New York Architectural League's annual exhibition in the spring of 1931, to be named the Aluminaire, "A House for Contemporary Life," based on "your principles as a foundation for our time." (Letter from Albert Frey to Le Corbusier, February 20, 1931. Bacon, p. 28).
Truscon and ALCOA ads, Architectural Record, Vol. 68, No. 5, pp. 2, 23.
Left: "Gar-Wood Boiler ad," Architectural Record, Vol. 68, No. 2, p. 29. Right: "View of the entry and boiler from above: a cut-away axonometric study by Albert Frey. (Schwarting and Campani, p.28).
Albert Frey was fed many product ads for potential inclusion in Aluminaire, such as the above left Gar-Wood boiler ad, to size up his space requirements. The boiler was to be celebrated as an art object in a semi-circular niche.
Left: Aluminaire House, perspective view. (Crespo, p. 16). Right: Aluminaire House, preliminary project model photos. (Crespo, p. 20).
In early December, Frey drew the elevations and floor plans, enabling him to construct a model for Kocher's use in approaching product manufacturers for material donations.
"Planning the House Garage," Architectural Record, Vol. 69, No. 1, January 1931, pp. 52-57
Kocher and Frey made use of their Aluminaire design time by incorporating their research into technical articles for the magazine. A good case in point is the Aluminaire garage. Frey used his Villa Savoye experience with Le Corbusier and Willard Morgan's Conrad Buff garage photos for Neutra's Buff Studio project, published in both the November 1930 and January 1931 issues of the magazine. Frey also included in Aluminaire's design and collaborated with Knud Lonberg-Holm's December 1930 "Technical News and Research" article, i.e., "Lightweight Roof and Floor Constructions," including Truscon and Holobird decks, "Lightweight Metals" including aluminum, "Plastics" including celluloid, as well as "Remote Control, Radio Control for Garage Door Operators." ("Reducing Dead Load, Saving Time, and Increasing Control," by Knud Lonberg-Holm, Architectural Record, Vol. 68, No. 6, pp. 473-482).
Kocher also included a blurb on the Architectural and Allied Arts Exposition in the January issue, stating,
"... At the forthcoming exposition, efforts will be made to plan exhibits so that the public will see recorded the development of an individual piece of art from the initial sketch until its final stage as a finished work and also to trace the history of the industry as a whole utilizing pictures and old and modern examples of craftsmanship. ..." (See also in my "Neutra, Schindler, Kocher, Frey").
Left: Detail for jamb and mullions drawn by Albert Frey, January 3, 1931. (Crespo, p. 22). Right: Detail for mullions and jambs drawn by Albert Frey on February 2, 1931. (Crespo, p. 25).
Kocher and Frey also published an article in the February issue compiling their research on windows gleaned while detailing Aluminaire. (See above for example). ("Windows," by A. Lawrence Kocher and Albert Frey, Architectural Record, Vol. 69, No. 2, pp. 126-137).
While Kocher and Frey were heavily engaged in New York with Aluminaire design and Architectural Record editing, Frey's Brussels and Parisian colleagues, as well as Richard Neutra, were preparing for CIAM's third, and most important, conference to date under the theme "Rational Development" to be held in Brussels in late November 1930. While still in Japan in the summer of 1930, on the first leg of his around-the-world lecture tour, with his primary destination as CIAM III in Brussels, Richard Neutra received a glowing fan letter from Albert Frey's atelier mate in Paris, Kunio Maekawa. After meeting Neutra in Tokyo and hearing him lecture on the techniques of industrially prefabricated, internationally replicable architecture, Maekawa wrote:
"I regret so much that I can't express myself in your beautiful language - it's the only language with which man can sing the jazz ... The only thing I've learned in Europe is that so long as the architects of today will be adhering to their rather romantic title which is 'architect' and which accompanies often so ridiculously heroic childish glory, the modern architecture in its most correct sense will never be attained." Of his time in Paris with Le Corbusier, Charlotte Perriand, Ernest Weissman, Norman Rice, and Albert Frey he wrote, "...we promised the eternal friendship and the glorious future collaboration. And I was so happy last night to have found one more comrade who are you." (Kunio Maekawa letter to Richard Neutra, June 12, 1930. Hines, p. 113).
Left: Poster announcing the opening of the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels in 1928. Right: Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, 1928, Victor Horta, architect. Wikipedia.
The Palais des Beaux-Arts, the venue chosen for the third annual CIAM conference in Brussels, was completed in 1928 and designed by Victor Horta. The Belgian section of CIAM under Vice-President Victor Bourgeois spent months ironing out the details for the congress, with CIAM General Secretary Siegfried Giedion, which delayed the start of the event until November 27th. Horta's role as head of the selection jury for the 1927 League of Nations design competition and the jury's selection of an extremely traditional design over the modern entry of Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret deemed him 'persona non grata' for the event.
Photograph of the participants in the third CIAM Conference in the Center for Fine Arts, Brussels, 1930. (Strauven, p. 119).
The country of Belgium was still celebrating its 100th anniversary after already hosting two international trade expositions at Antwerp and Liège. The third annual CIAM congress was a great chance for Brussels to participate in that glory. The theme for the event was“Une Exposition de l’Habitation.” Everyone who was anyone on the Belgian and international architecture scenes attended, that is, everyone but Victor Horta. (From "The Center for Fine Arts," by Anne-Marie and Iwan Struven, p. 20).
Left: "Internationale Umschau," Das Neue Frankfurt, January 1931, pp. 14-15. Right: Rationelle Bebauungsweisen, edited by Siegfried Giedion, Julius Hoffmann, Stuttgart, 1931. Book design by Max Bill.
Joseph Gantner published an article covering CIAM III in Brussels in Das Neue Frankfurt in the January 1930 issue. Siegfried Giedion compiled the proceedings of the late November Brussels conference in Rationelle Bebauungsweisen (Rational Development Methods). The book contained contributions by Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius, Karl Tiege, Victor Bourgeois, Richard Neutra, and many others. Joseph Gantner also covered the show in his February issue of Das Neue Frankfurt, republishing Walter Gropius's illustrated article from the proceedings, "Flach-Mittel-Oder Hochbau." (See above and below.)
"Brussels Cité Moderne, 1922," Victor Bourgeois, architect, presented at CIAM III and reproduced by Giedion in Rationelle Bebauungsweisen.
Two sections of "Rush City Reformed" by Richard Neutra, architect, presented in CIAM III and in "Flach-Mittel-Oder Hochbau" by Walter Gropius, Das Neue Frankfurt, Vol. 5, No. 2, February 1931, pp. 30-31 also included in Rationelle Bebauungsweisen. (See also in Amerika, p. 64)
Richard Neutra proudly presented his 'Rush City Reformed' at CIAM III after elements of it were previously published in Frey's soon-to-be partner, A. Lawrence Kocher's August 1930 issue of Architectural Record under the title, "Terminals? - Transfer!"
Left: Le Corbusier's plan for the region of Central Paris as compared with the maze of New York skyscrapers, presented in CIAM III and "Flach-Mittel-Oder Hochbau" by Walter Gropius, in Das Neue Frankfurt, Vol. 5, No. 2, February 1931, pp. 30-31. Also in Rationelle Bebauungsweisen. Right: The Biological Element: the module of 14 sq. meters per inhabitant, designed by Le Corbusier and Charlotte Perriand, in 1930. Also presented in CIAM III. (Barsac, pp. 126-7).
Red Star Line "Belgenland" poster, ca. 1930.
Richard Neutra returned to the United States from Brussels on December 11, 1930, sailing from Antwerp, Belgium on December 2nd on the Belgenland.
Announcement for the Aluminaire House exhibit in the Architectural and Allied Arts Exhibition, April 1931. (Dunning, p. 48).
Frey later recalled the creation of the exposition house,
"We called the house we designed for the League Exposition "Aluminaire," expressing our design concept of light and air. The house would feature large windows and open-air living, and be a durable structure with siding of aluminum. We incorporated many new features and conveniences into the design, such as tubular lighting, compact wardrobes, washable wall surfaces, folding partitions, "Micarta" - an early plastic laminate - for working surfaces, a stainless steel sink, built-in radio, and many more. I made a 1/4" scale model of the "Aluminaire," and we presented it to the Exposition authorities and to suppliers and manufacturers of materials and products that would be incorporated into the house. Since times were slow, these firms were most cooperative and supportive in donating their supplies and products. (Stiverson, pp. xiv-xv).
Frey oversaw Aluminaire's construction over 10 days in early April, at the same time a version of Pauline Schindler's 'Creative Contemporary Architecture' exhibition was also being installed. Through his aggressive self-promotion while in New York Neutra made some very important connections that would bode well for his career including, besides Kocher & Frey, Philip Johnson and his father Homer, a corporate attorney for ALCOA, William Lescaze, Henry-Russell Hitchcock, Joseph Urban, Ely Jacques Kahn, Lewis Mumford, Raymond Hood, Buckminster Fuller, Bruno Paul, Ralph Walker, and many others. (See also my "Richard Neutra and the California Art Club" and "Buckminster Fuller, Isamu Noguchi, Richard Neutra, and Diego Rivera Dymaxion Connections").
Left: Albert Frey with 3 Walter Sweatt secretaries and glass cabinet and roll-out table, Aluminaire dining room. (Schwarting and Campani, p. 18). Right: "Plans Homes of Aluminum and Glass," Popular Science, July 1931. (Schwarting and Campani, p. 19).
Walter Sweatt conducted a publicity campaign for the Grand Central Palace exposition, and the above photos are the only remaining images of the Aluminaire's interior from the time of the show. The dining room and other built-in furniture were inspired by Frey's time collaborating with Charlotte Perriand in Paris.
Through Urban's connections, Neutra, Schindler, and the rest of Pauline's clients (including Kem Weber, Jock Peters, J. R. Davidson, and Lloyd Wright) were included in the April 1931 Architectural League of New York's 50th-anniversary exhibition which was held in conjunction with the Allied Arts and Building Products Exhibition in New York's Grand Central Palace (see above). Neutra and R. M. Schindler corresponded regarding installation details of the show during Neutra's stay in New York. (Hines, p. 99 and note 24, p. 327, and Sheine, p. 256 and note 6, p. 284).
Elements of Kem Weber's, J. R. Davidson's, Jock Peters', and Lloyd Wright's work moved on the following month to the Brooklyn Museum's American Union of Decorative Artists and Craftsmen (AUDAC) exhibition and was published in the organization's first "Annual of American Design." (See also my "Pauline Gibling Schindler: Vagabond Agent for Modernism.").
Left: Aluminaire House at Syosset, Long Island, 1931. (Schwarting and Campani, p. 87). Right: Albert Frey on the roof terrace of Aluminaire, Syosset, Long Island, 1931. (Schwarting and Campani, p. 43).
After the show closed, Aluminaire was quickly dismantled, sold to architect Walter Harrison for $1,000, and moved to his acreage in Syosset, Long Island, where it was reconstructed for use as his family summer home. (See above).
The Aluminaire was trumpeted with much fanfare during and after the show, appearing in more than 30 articles in local and national media. Douglas Haskell and Catherine Bauer reviewed the exposition in Parnassus and The New Republic in May, both making it clear that the Aluminaire House was the only breath of fresh air in the otherwise very conservative League exhibition. Bauer wrote,
"One, and only one, exhibit displays any curiosity whatsoever about the modern possibilities in a type solution for small dwellings. This is Mr. Kocher's aluminum house, built full-size from standard materials, completely and economically functional. It is a fine and stimulating piece of work and well worth the seventy-five-cent admission and even the general chaos." ("Who Cares About Architecture?" by Catherine K. Bauer, The New Republic, May 5, 1931, pp. 326-7).
Haskell commented on Kocher's commercial contacts, which enabled Aluminaire's rapid construction,
"Mr Kocher's full-scale aluminum house, curiously enough, was not sponsored by the committee but was a "commercial" exhibit sponsored by manufacturers and contractors. That, too, was indicative; for the motor of present events seems to be industrial change." ("The Architectural League and the Rejected Architects," Douglas Haskell, Parnassus, Vol. 3, No. 5, May 1931, pp. 12-13).
"Real-Estate Subdivisions for Low-Cost Housing," by A. Lawrence Kocher and Albert Frey, Architectural Record, Vol. 69, No. 4, April 1931, pp. 323-327.
Enthused by the success of the prefabricated Aluminaire, Kocher's next step was to publish an article by him and Frey with the express interest of trying to lure a developer into producing a modern subdivision of prefabricated modern units at numbers that would minimize costs. The authors expounded on the use of a prototypical house, identical to the Aluminaire, and used a principle similar to a plan in Le Corbusier's Pessac housing development. Although never realized, these designs investigated the true potential of the Aluminaire as a prototype for modern housing. Frey reminisced about the above article,
"Lawrence and I collaborated on articles for the Architectural Record concerning low-cost housing. Lawrence's office was part of the F. W. Dodge Corporation, which also produced Sweet's Catalogs, and therefore he was informed of the latest developments in construction materials and techniques." (Stiverson, p. xvi).
Albert Frey and A. Lawrence Kocher, lunch at Rockefeller Center, 1931. (Schwarting and Campani, p. 49).
Frey's relationship with Kocher and Architectural Record in the early 1930s was akin to relearning his architectural training in the English language under the tutorship of an experienced educator and a modernist architectural journal editor. Kocher's genius was being able to translate Frey's earlier training in Le Corbusier's atelier. Their partnership was a match made in heaven.
Afterword:
Albert Frey and A. Lawrence Kocher were both positive forces in the evolution of modern architecture in the early 1930s. They remained lifelong friends after Frey relocated to Palm Springs in late 1934 to oversee the construction of one of the city's first modernist buildings, the Lawrence Kocher's brother J. J.'s Kocher-Samson Building. For much more on Frey's modernist connections, see my:
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