As the title of the book suggests, in Eileen Gray. A House Under the Sun the two main characters of this story—Irish architect Eileen Gray and the French Riviera house E-1027—overlap in a way that blurs the line between object and human, and confers architecture a living, breathing, bodily quality that perfectly matches Gray’s approach to architecture. Lyrical, silent illustrations of the house depict her emotional involvement with Gray’s lover Badovici, from the very happy moments of the building’s conception to the unhappiness of their falling out and Gray’s departure at the end of the book. In this context, the infamous image of a naked Le Corbusier painting his mural, with the subsequent arrogant statements and lack of recognition, appear in all their insolence and brutality toward the protagonist Gray/E-1027. Through Gray’s critique of the modernist Machine-à-habiter and through her camping concept—a “cohesive, synchronised, ungendered approach to space”— E-1027 becomes the living embodiment of care for all dwellers of architecture.
— Chiara Dorbolò, Curator of the Architecture Book Fair 2021
