Rendering of the House for Two Sculptors, 2023 © Egg Collective
Designing Women IV:
EILEEN GRAY’S HOUSE FOR TWO SCULPTORS
Egg Collective
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Over her career Eileen Gray designed nearly fifty works of architecture. Only three were ever realized.
Each holding a degree in architecture, Egg Collective’s three co-founders — Stephanie Beamer, Crystal Ellis and Hillary Petrie — know firsthand that architecture is a male-dominated industry. However, while scouting potential photoshoot locations, they were struck by how few works of female-authored historic architecture are documented or exist in the present day. Designing Women IV: Eileen Gray’s House for Two Sculptors was born out of a desire to address this chasm. They wondered, what if, through modern technology, an unbuilt work of female-authored architecture could be realized and therefore lifted from obscurity? This line of questioning set them off on a journey through architectural archives and eventually into a conversation across time with the late Eileen Gray.
One of Eileen Gray’s architectural works that never made it past pencil on paper was the House for Two Sculptors. Upon her passing at the age of 98, the House for Two Sculptors lived on in Gray’s archive as a rarely published set of basic hand drawings. Conceived of in 1933, its clients, site and broader inspiration have been lost to history. Reading that the plan for the House for Two Sculptors was designed around an “egg-shaped” atelier, a seed was planted. After gaining permission to do so, Egg Collective’s co-founders set out on a years long journey of discovery, research and inspiration in order to digitally bring Eileen Gray’s original plans to life.
Aiming to exemplify ideas sketched out by Grey but never completed in her lifetime, the project entailed carefully retracing the marks left by Eileen’s hand, as well as the study of her aesthetic, ethos and legacy. Throughout the process, Egg Collective endeavored to stay true to the unmistakable creative language Eileen Gray developed over the course of her long career while also asserting the inspiration she had on subsequent generations of designers, themselves included. Designing Women IV: Eileen Gray’s House for Two Sculptors documents this process and invites viewers to imagine what it would be like to inhabit the House for Two Sculptors had it been built via a series of photorealistic renderings, and an exhibition on view at the company’s Tribeca Gallery. The exhibition will open to the public on May 15th wherein vignettes inspired by both the House for Two Sculptors and Eileen Gray’s unmistakeable design language will be presented alongside designs by Egg Collective and artworks by two contemporary sculptors and friends: Taylor Kibby and Molly Haynes.
A limited edition exhibition catalog documenting the project is also available for purchase here. Proceeds from the sale of the catalog will be donated to Girls Garage, a non-profit design and construction school for girls and gender-expansive youth working to help change the demographic makeup of the industries that create and author the physical world.
Architect
Eileen Gray
Project
House For Two Sculptors
Clients
Unknown
Site
Unknown
Year Designed
1933
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Year Rendered
2023
Eileen Gray, Design for a house for two sculptors: plan, 1933. © RIBA Library Drawings and Archive Collections
Eileen Gray, Design for a house for two sculptors: elevations, 1933. © RIBA Library Drawings and Archive Collections
Computer Model of the House for Two Sculptors, 2023. © Egg Collective
Over her career Eileen Gray designed nearly fifty works of architecture. Only three were ever realized.
The first and most famous of Eileen Gray’s built works is a seaside villa designed in 1926. Located along the Mediterranean near Monaco, Gray was unable to purchase the property because she lacked French citizenship, leading to its acquisition under the name of her then romantic partner Jean Badovici. The home was titled E.1027 as a creative fusion of the couple’s names. With her design Gray sought a complete unity of exterior and interior elements, complicating the distinction between architecture and interior design. Ahead of her time, and her contemporaries, Gray rejected the austere rigidity of modernism advanced most vocally by famed architect Le Corbusier. Instead, she sought to humanize and enrich the principles of modernism stating “the dominance of reason, order and math leave a house cold and inhumane.” For her, the home was a place for living. In fact, one of her most iconic furnishings - an adjustable height chrome and glass side table - was designed for eating toast in bed without getting crumbs on the sheets.
Sadly, Gray lost control of E.1027 after the end of her relationship with Badovici, eventually leading to its partial defacement by Le Corbusier, a move speculated to be fueled by some measure of personal animus and jealousy. Throughout her long and prolific career, Gray had the opportunity to complete only two other architectural assignments, robbing the world of a clearer efflorescence of her creative vision. Disrupted by war and stymied by sexism, the breadth, beauty and sheer originality of her work was nearly lost to history - often being attributed to either Badovici or Corbusier. In fact, for much of her life, Gray’s designs existed at the margins of the field she helped shape.
One of the architectural works that never made it past pencil on paper was the House for Two Sculptors. Upon her passing at the age of 98, the House for Two Sculptors lived on in her archive as a rarely published set of drawings. It was in one of those publications, a book entitled “Eileen Gray, Designer” by J. Stewart Johnson, that ninety years after its conception Egg Collective’s co-founders discovered the unrealized work. Of her architectural practice, Stewart wrote:
“Many of the ideas Eileen Gray was unable to build, she nonetheless worked through with plans, technical drawings, and elaborate models.”
Conceived of in 1933, the House for Two Sculptors furthest evolution is documented by four hand-drawn elevations, one plan, and one chipboard model. Little more is known about the project. Its clients, site and broader inspiration have been lost to history.
“Eileen, can we bring this project to life for you?”
Tracing Eileen’s Drawings, Screenshot, 2023. © Egg Collective
“I’ve asked Eileen questions silently while tracing her marks and studying the photographs of her designs. I like to think she has heard me, somehow, and that this project reflects her answers. Her hand there all along invisibly guiding mine.”
— Crystal Ellis, Co-Founder Egg Collective, Journal Entry from December 2023
Exterior Views
Image Key
Rendering of the House for Two Sculptors, 2023 © Egg Collective
EXTERIOR VIEW “A” showing the large pivot door to the egg-shaped atelier
Rendering of the House for Two Sculptors, 2023 © Egg Collective
EXTERIOR VIEW “B” showing the trapezoidal window of the egg-shaped atelier
Rendering of the House for Two Sculptors, 2023 © Egg Collective
EXTERIOR VIEW “C” showing the front entry to the residence and half-domed window to the egg-shaped atelier
Gray’s drawings for the House for Two Sculptors clearly express her intentions for the home’s exterior and overall volume. However no interior elevations or drawings exist and the floorplans that she did leave behind lack any notes on materiality, precise scale, or interior detailing. Bringing the design to life therefore required both a close study of Gray’s design practice and a willingness to step into the role of interpreter and co-creator.
The renderings executed by Egg Collective include Gray’s detailing where possible. However, it was necessary to “color in the lines” and it was in these decisions that Egg Collective’s co-founders were required to both interpret — using context clues — and co-create — using archival imagery as reference.
As a means of further actualizing Gray’s integrated vision of design, the digitally realized space was utilized to stage pieces from Egg Collective’s Collection, fulfilling the essential premise of a staging area for sculptural work. In doing so, Egg Collective endeavored to stay true to the unmistakable creative language Eileen Gray developed over the course of her long career, while also asserting the inspiration she has had on subsequent generations of designers, themselves included.
“History is not a simple meritocracy: it is a narrative of the past written and revised — or not written at all — by people with agendas…The reasons we forget women architects are varied and complex.”
— Despina Stratgakos
Residence Views
Image Key
Rendering of the House for Two Sculptors, 2023 © Egg Collective
RESIDENCE VIEW “D” standing in the front entry looking toward the dining area
Rendering of the House for Two Sculptors, 2023 © Egg Collective
RESIDENCE VIEW “E” standing in the living room looking toward the kitchen and front entry
Eileen Gray, Portfolio, Tempe a Pailla Castellar, living room / studio with work table and terrace threshold. Photograph.© National Museum of Ireland
Egg Collective Rendering of the House for Two Sculptors ca. 2023
RESIDENCE VIEW “F” standing in the bedroom
Eilieen Gray’s House E-1027. Photograph: Will Pryce/Country Life Picture Library. Credit: Will Pryce/Country Life Picture
Egg Collective Rendering of the House for Two Sculptors ca. 2023
RESIDENCE VIEW “G” standing in the living room facing away from the hallway to the egg-shaped atelier
Egg Collective Rendering of the House for Two Sculptors ca. 2023
RESIDENCE VIEW “H” standing in the living room facing toward the hallway to the egg-shaped atelier
Atelier Views
Image Key
Egg Collective Rendering of the House for Two Sculptors ca. 2023
ATELIER VIEW “I” standing in the egg-shaped atelier facing the balcony
Egg Collective Rendering of the House for Two Sculptors ca. 2023
ATELIER VIEW “J” standing in the egg-shaped atelier facing the triple height windows
“Eileen died in 1976 at the age of 98… She passed not knowing the breadth of the legacy she was leaving behind — the designers, like myself, that she’d inspire — the books cataloging her life and work that would be written — or the projects and exhibitions her archive would inspire.”
— Crystal Ellis— Crystal Ellis, Co-Founder Egg Collective
Eileen Gray, by Berenice Abbott, 1926, black and white photograph © National Museum of Ireland
Gray was a pioneer who paved the way for many who came after her. At a 2022 museum opening of Gray’s work, the director of Bard Graduate Center Gallery, Nina Stritzler-Levine, said to the press:
“Eileen Gray remains fundamentally underestimated or misunderstood by most critics and historians ... Most of the time she’s conflated with Charlotte Perriand, and it’s important to remember she was born in 1878, but Charlotte Perriand wasn’t born until 1903.”
A fascinating figure, Gray was a flamboyant bon vivant whose adventures took her from the estates of Ireland’s County Wexford, to the Bohemian cliques of Edwardian England, and the Art Deco environs of early ‘20s Paris. She embraced a life-long sense of curiosity that led to an early mastering of the art of studio lacquering, a stint as a WWI ambulance driver, architecture and interior design work in the inter-war period, internment during WWII, and finally a late-career rediscovery in the 1960s. An avowed bisexual, she spent time in the chic lesbian circles of 1920s Paris, including a romance with the French night-club chanteuse Marisa Damia, the two making an alluring trio riding around in a convertible with Damia’s famous pet panther.
Beyond her colorful lifestyle, Gray was a preeminent architect who never had a chance to realize the full scope and promise of her vision. The reimagining of Gray’s House for Two Sculptors seeks to rescue another groundbreaking work from the obscurity of embryonic blueprints. In doing so, Egg Collective hopes to shed light on the unsung contributions of Gray as an extraordinary pioneer in the field, while bringing greater visibility to the still rare phenomenon of female authored design amid the masculine-centric Modernist landscape.
“I was not a pusher and maybe that’s the reason I did not get the place I should have had.”
— Eileen Gray
“Until recently, historians assumed that there were no female practitioners before the mid-20th century and so they did not bother to look. Nor was it likely that they would stumble upon these designers by chance, given that traditional research methods focus on archives and libraries, institutions that have been slow to collect women’s work... As a result, anyone seeking to learn about their lives and careers has had to be inventive and eclectic in their use of sources in order to supplement the archival documentation conventionally understood as the historian’s primary materials.”
When viewing the field of architecture through this lens, it is unsurprising the level of invisibility that women architects suffer in popular culture and in history books. Egg Collective’s Designing Women IV: Eileen Gray’s House for Two Sculptors realizes an unbuilt female-authored work of architecture in order to foster a dialogue around the lack of representation in this field. The project further begs the question, how many unknown and unrealized female-authored works could be meaningful to the history of architecture today?
Though it is challenging to find statistics that measure the ratio of built works attributed to women architects, there are many reports quantifying the hurdles that women have, and still face, in the field. One striking example is the AIA Gold Medal. Considered one of the highest honors in architecture, since its inception in 1907 it has only been awarded to four women: Julia Morgan (posthumously) in 2014, Denise Scott Brown and Robert Venturi in 2016 (the AIA amended its bylaws in 2013 to allow for pairs in the wake of petition to have Scott Brown retrospectively acknowledged for a 1991 Pritzker Prize solely awarded to Venturi), Angela Brooks and Lawrence Scarpain 2022, and Carol Ross Barney in 2023.
In her essay entitled Unforgetting Women Architects: From the Pritzker to Wikipedia, Despina Stratgakos explains that:
Eileen Gray, 1973, color photograph © National Museum of Ireland
Spanning the entire gallery, vignettes inspired by both the House for Two Sculptors and Eileen Gray’s aesthetic will be presented alongside designs by Egg Collective and artworks by two contemporary sculptors: Taylor Kibby and Molly Haynes. Additionally, in honor of Eileen Gray’s lasting legacy and impact on the field of design, Egg Collective will also unveil their latest creation, the Eileen Mirror, inspired by the tactile patterns and geometries found in Gray’s textiles.
As friends and colleagues, Molly Haynes and Taylor Kibby’s artistic practices are linked. Like Eileen Gray, Kibby and Haynes celebrate materiality and craft through their work. Precise and methodical actions such as weaving, rolling, braiding, and beading are used to transform fiber, clay, thread and glass into sumptuous forms that drape and unfurl. Their work blurs the boundaries of solid and fluid, masculine and feminine, structure and relaxed. Like the lacquer screens Eileen Gray is now famous for, their artworks both highlight and conceal, dividing up and layering space in order to draw in the viewer. Also like Gray, their artworks are highly personal and sensual; resisting classification each is a celebration of the human search for knowledge and expression.
To help foster a more inclusive and expansive future for women in design, proceeds from a limited edition exhibition catalog will be donated to Girls Garage, a non-profit design and construction school for girls and gender-expansive youth working to help change the demographic makeup of the industries that create and author the physical world. Girls Garage’s mission states:
We’ve all seen the statistics that paint a bleak picture of female underrepresentation in STEM and the trades. These are problems of access, support, culture, and inclusion. These statistics represent more, however, than an unbalanced, unequal workforce; they are a dire implication of who gets to have a say in the authorship of our built world. What might our cities, technology, and environments look like if they were created by women, queer women, women of color, nonbinary individuals? We believe that addressing the problems of underrepresentation and retention of women in these career paths is not merely for statistical gain, but for the betterment of our world.
