‘Pierre Chareau: Modern Architecture and Design’ Review: An Alchemist of Materials
Largely forgotten by the time of his death in 1950, Chareau was a master of contrast, taking the cold hardware of industrial modernism and combining it with velvety textiles, alabaster light fixtures and exotic woods.
New York
The Maison de Verre in Paris is a masterwork of 20th-century architecture that few people know about and even fewer have visited—an idiosyncratic structure where luxury, technology and avant-garde art fused and effloresced in the fervid moment before Europe crashed economically and went to war. Yet the 1932 building, now privately owned by a retired American financier and architecture buff, has long been a pilgrimage site for architects keen to see the pivoting walls, retractable stair, sliding mahogany panels, perforated metal screens and rubber floor...