{"id":14409,"date":"2026-03-06T15:26:12","date_gmt":"2026-03-06T15:26:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/e-zeppelin.ro\/en\/?p=14409"},"modified":"2026-03-07T07:53:56","modified_gmt":"2026-03-07T07:53:56","slug":"two-houses-1925-1926-eileen-gray-and-henriette-delavrancea-gibory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/e-zeppelin.ro\/en\/two-houses-1925-1926-eileen-gray-and-henriette-delavrancea-gibory\/","title":{"rendered":"Two Houses: 1925, 1926. Eileen Gray and Henriette Delavrancea-Gibory"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Two women started their architectural practice in the early 1920s: Henriette Delavrancea-Gibory, in 1925, in Bucharest, and Eileen Gray, in 1926, in France, Roquebrune-Cap-Martin. Although there is no direct biographical connection between the two figures, which have been recently revived in the professional culture, a parallel revisitation of the first houses they design supports not just a nuanced understanding of the early years of architectural Modernism, but also an endeavour to recover critical models, illustrated by the architecture project itself.<\/span><\/p>\n

Text: Ilinca Pop<\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The first half of the 1920s meant not only a moment of asserting major directions for the architecture that widely represented the Modern Movement, and which would subsequently be registered by the canonical history, but also a time of explorations and temperate positionings. As historian Hilde Heynen explains in <\/span>Architecture and Modernity, modernity, <\/i><\/span>understood as the condition of the newly modernised world (or which was undergoing modernisation) introduced a separation between affects and the environment. That kind of separation is conveyed, for example, also by the model of <\/span>the minimum dwelling. <\/i><\/span>It is perhaps precisely because this type of separation has led to the philosophical understanding of Modernity as “a condition that is diametrically opposed to dwelling” (or even as a situation of “homelessness”)<\/span>^{1<\/a><\/span><\/sup>, it is important to revisit some critical models that are present throughout the wider history of Modernism. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n}

A “revisionist” attitude towards the canonical history also concerns the fact that, at the beginning of the 20th century, there were not many women practising architecture: in Romania, Henriette Delavrancea-Gibory was one of the first graduates of the School of Architecture, and Eileen Gray would study arts and specialise in furniture design before her first architecture project. In fact, the architect was already in a mature period of her furniture design career. This first house, E1027, was designed as a temporary holiday residence for Jean Badovici, editor of the<\/span> L’Architecture Vivante<\/i><\/span> avantgarde magazine.<\/span> Eileen Gray’s work only includes two houses, a series of interior designs and the furniture pieces that have entered a canonical visual imagery <\/span>(the Bibendum armchair, for instance)<\/span>. E1027 is reflecting the directions <\/span>of 1920s Modernism, prone to sensible negotiations between the open plan and the structure plan, but also shows the architect’s concern with understanding the house “as a living organism”, for which the inhabitant’s “interior life” holds central meaning. All the furniture is an integral part of the project and provides a careful response to the needs of such interior life, which becomes protected by the architecture of the house set against the Roquebrune-Cap-Martin landscape. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Without the possibility of being mirrored as such in the context or building of Henriette Delavrancea-Gibory’s first house in Bucharest, at 149 Mihai Eminescu St., both E1027, and Henriette’s house reflect critical stances towards what would later become the more „radical” Modernism in architecture. On the one hand, we are speaking of the idea of house as a “living organism” as it appears with Eileen Gray, and on the other hand, of the domesticity of Henriette’s house, with its details of a dwelling fit for the semi-rural atmosphere of a Bucharest that was still undergoing modernisation. Henriette’s house is initially designed as an atelier-house, <\/span>un pied-à-terre d’artiste. <\/i><\/span>Two years after the house is built, it receives an extension and becomes the permanent residence of “Mr. and Mrs. Gibory”. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

$\"02_A_henriette_1\"$ <\/a>*Henriette Delavrancea in the 1920s<\/span><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n