Villa Paul Poiret in Mézy-sur-Seine,

Yvelines Yvelines () is a department in the western part of the Île-de-France region in Northern France. In 2019, it had a population of 1,448,207.France France, officially the French Republic, is a country located primarily in Western Europe. Overseas France, Its overseas regions and territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the Atlantic Ocean#North Atlan ...

, is an early 1920s

Cubism Cubism is an early-20th-century avant-garde art movement which began in Paris. It revolutionized painting and the visual arts, and sparked artistic innovations in music, ballet, literature, and architecture. Cubist subjects are analyzed, broke ...

-inspired

Art Deco Art Deco, short for the French (), is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design that first Art Deco in Paris, appeared in Paris in the 1910s just before World War I and flourished in the United States and Europe during the 1920 ...

private house originally designed by architect

Robert Mallet-Stevens Robert Mallet-Stevens (24 March 1886 – 8 February 1945) was a French architect and designer. Early life Mallet-Stevens was born in Paris. His father and his grandfather were art collectors in Paris and Brussels. His great-uncles were the Be ...

. The house stands in of parkland in Mézy-sur-Seine, to the west of Paris, overlooking the

Seine Valley The Seine ( , ) is a river in northern France. Its drainage basin is in the Paris Basin (a geological relative lowland) covering most of northern France. It rises at Source-Seine, northwest of Dijon in northeastern France in the Langres plat ...

. It is constructed in

reinforced concrete Reinforced concrete, also called ferroconcrete or ferro-concrete, is a composite material in which concrete's relatively low tensile strength and ductility are compensated for by the inclusion of reinforcement having higher tensile strength or ...

in a geometric style, has 25 rooms on three levels, of internal space, an upper terrace with panoramic views, and a corner salon with floor-to-ceiling windows.New York Times 26.11.2010: ''Rescuing a Cubist Icon With French Couture Roots''
Retrieved 14 March 2011 Villa Paul Poiret was commissioned by fashion designer

Paul Poiret Paul Poiret (20 April 1879 – 30 April 1944) was a French fashion designer, a master couturier during the first two decades of the 20th century. He was the founder of his namesake haute couture house. Early life and career Poiret was bor ...

in 1921; its building completed in 1925. The house fell into disrepair, and was sold by Poiret in 1930 to actress

Elvira Popescu Elvira Popescu (; in French, Elvire Popesco; 10 May 1894 – 11 December 1993) was a Romanian- French stage and film actress and theatre director. During the 1930s and 1940s, she starred in a number of French comedy films. Life and career Popes ...

, who lived there from 1938 to 1985. Popescu hired the architect Paul Boyer in 1932 to alter the original design to the contemporary Art Deco Paquebot (steamship) style, converting windows to portholes, and rounding-off terrace corners. The house was listed as an historic landmark in 1984. In 1999 the house, which had once more become dilapidated, was bought by Laurent Brun. Under the auspices of the French National Historic Landmark Commission and the Bâtiments de France, (the two bodies responsible for listed buildings), the Mallet-Stevens exterior and the Popescu/Boyer interior have been restored. Villa Paul Poiret is part of the ''Journées de Patrimoine'', (Heritage Days), scheme in which public and private buildings of historic importance are open to the public on the third weekend in September. Image:MalletStevensMezy.jpg, East view Image:MalletStevensMezy1.jpg, Interior (salon)

See also

References

Further reading