Creating Shapes: La Maison de Verre

La Maison de Verre is illuminated to highlight the geometric shape of the exterior façade. (photo: "La Maison de Verre" published by Thames & Hudson)

Through his work on La Maison de Verre, Pierre Chareau explored the nature of geometric forms in order to create the shape of the façade and to manipulate the living areas inside the home for their different purposes. This inspiration offers insight into the building’s structural capacity of numbers and geometry, and it heightens the building’s prestige by utilizing these perfect shapes.

           

When viewing La Maison de Verre, the focal point of the building is the large, rectangular glass window that creates the front exterior wall.  This geometric shape contributes to the level of modernity that the building expresses in its use and in its structure.

The square window blocks are set into a grid pattern to form structural support for the glass wall and to provide the overall shape of the façade. The precision of this form expresses prestige in craftsmanship and sets the building apart from others its time.

The  interior of La Maison de Verre exhibits the geometric structure of the steel frame. (photo: paris-architecture.info)

In the interior of La Maison de Verre, the large geometric shape of the glass wall pours a vast amount of light into the living areas, which regular windows would be unable to provide. The shape of these windows offers the largest possible amount of translucent light into the salon, which, in return, gives the interior of the building its overall mood and aesthetic appeal.

The rectilinear beams that provide the building’s support also give shape to the rooms and divide the living areas for the separate spheres of family life. The rooms are set into different sizes of rectangular shapes to provide for their different functions, rather it be smaller rooms for the doctor’s office or larger rooms for the common areas.

The precision of these spaces provides order to the mechanic nature of the home, allowing the inhabitants to revel in the simplicity of its form by living in clearly organized sections of private and public life.

Because the home is built inside a previous structure, the main means of organization of the building are the steel beams. The beams highlight the geometric shapes by providing parallel, vertical divisions inside the rooms to capture the ease of the home’s structure and its contemporary foundation.

If Pierre Chareau had employed more organic forms into La Maison de Verre, the effect of light into the rooms would not have created as bold of a statement, and the mechanized flow of the living areas would not have been as systematically organized. 

Overall, La Maison de Verre exhibits the efficiency and prestige of geometric forms in order to create a home that is both functional and capable of making a statement while staying true to the ease of its rectangular form.