Architectural Icon E.1027 By Eileen Gray: Colors For The Senses

With E.1027, the designer Eileen Gray created an architectural icon. Now the company kt.color has presented a new color collection based on the color findings of the house by the sea.

Author: Carola Neydenbock

If a building could tell a story, it would have a lot to say: E.1027. Eileen Gray, born in Ireland, studied art in Paris and got to know and love the Romanian architect Jean Badovici. On the coast of Roquebrune-Cap-Martin in France, the two built their own empire in 1929 with E.1027. The letters are composed of the letters Eileen Gray and Jean Badovici: E. for Eileen, 10 for J, 2 for B, 7 for G.

The interior of the house is carefully planned: the individual rooms are arranged so that the residents can withdraw at any time. Gray also designed the interior himself, which is how today's design classic "Adjustable table E.1027" has its roots. The architect and designer Le Corbusier was a good friend of Eileen Gray and settled near the villa in 1949. Here he built a wooden hut in 1952, which is known under the name "Le Cabanon". In Gray's absence, the architect painted eight murials on the interior and exterior walls without her consent. Gray did not agree with the sometimes very colorful murals - she never visited her house again. The topicality of E.1027, however, remained: The villa was ahead of its time and still attracts architecture enthusiasts from all over the world. In recent years, the house by the sea has been extensively restored. The Swiss paint manufacturer kt.color was involved in tracking down the original colors of the villa.

Searching for traces

As a result of the search for traces, the company recently presented a new color collection at its branch in Kirchentellinsfurt. The color card E.1027 contains twelve shades that were developed according to the findings of the team of restorers. This means that the colors were not modeled on a color fan, as is common practice, but the layers of color were examined with a microscope and mixed individually. The special feature: The manufacturer formulated the material very close to the original with pigments, grain size, binding agents and a similar feel. In the in-house workshop, the founder and managing director of kt.color, Katrin Trautwein, presented the new range based on emulsion paint.

Colors in relation to the landscape

With names such as "Eileens Gray" and "Terre de Sienne brûlée", the colors reflect the design concept of the house: According to Katrin Trautwein, all colors used on E.1027 always had a high landscape reference. "Eileen Gray brought the colors from the outside to the inside," says the doctor of chemistry. "The combination of the color tones increases the value of the color." The team found the color "Eileens Gray", for example, in the dining area and in the salon of the bedroom. In the cupboards of the villa they saw “Terre de Sienne brûlée”, a dry, red color that reminds of the ground of the property garden. As with other icons of classical modernism, artificial pigments and bright paint have changed the original appearance of E.1027. Changing owners had painted over the colors that prevailed at the time of construction - faulty restoration measures did the rest. Most recently, the facade was designed in clinical white. As the first version, they identified experts from kt.color traces of a bright, bright lime color. “Blanc de Pussigny” from the manufacturer's collection is the equivalent.

Gray died in Paris in 1976. What it is like to walk in your legacy E.1027 can now be experienced with these twelve "colors for the senses".

Further information:

www.ktcolor.ch

PraxisPlus

kt.color is expanding the network of “Masters of Colors” in Germany. In the future, sales will only go through these qualified painters. The “masters of colors” receive

attractive conditions on colors, plasters and sample collections, a website on the manufacturer's side as well as professional support in the creation of color concepts.

Interested parties can contact [email protected]

Katrin Trautwein, managing director of kt.color

For E.1027, Eileen Gray chose colors that

take up the surrounding landscape