"Topophilia. Poissy." Poissy by Adaptor-Plug

Poissy Travel Guide: 7 reviews and 25 photos

Le Corbusier's Villa Savoye.
Decent Resoultion Version Here

I THINK THAT I HAVE READ MORE ABOUT THE VILLA SAVOYE IN POISSY, than I have read about any other house on the entire planet. I've read about the Villa’s ramps, the inside merging with the outside, the piloti, the funny little parking bay and the gravel drive, the weird (for back then) bathroom and the tremendously functional kitchen sink. The Villa Savoye was designed, beautifully, by Le Corbusier (long round of applause and a swift genuflect, please).

In the early eighties I swotted and I analysed and I tried to understand Le C’s principles. I enjoyed his urban designs and gasped at his houses. I even warmed to his stark slab apartment buildings. Because I didn’t have to live in them. Plus… Him and His Villa Savoye always came up in end of year exams, so you would have to have been a complete lobotomy case not to have garnered enough on the bloke to write non stop for sixty minutes come finals. In the last weeks, before testing time, I would swot through the night until the sun rose. In hindsight I could theorise that my current love for the Villa and Le Corbusier is some hybrid form of Stockholm Syndrome.

On the other hand... rolling into History of Western Architecture and Art lectures at nine o'clock in the morning was NOT nearly as essential as stopping up all hours revising listening to Pink Floyd. Not, that is, if your chums photocopied their lecture notes and sold them to you. In which case you skipped the term time lectures and stopped in bed listening to Our Tune (or until your lass went home). Rarely making it onto campus until 11.30 meant I never heard a knowledgeable person ever refer to the Villa Savoye in noises. Not once did I hear the names of Le C’s wondrous dollops of domestic architecture pronounced through someone's gob. Nightmare.

A current day nightmare that came back to haunt me in Poissy. Because at the train station in Poissy being lovely and foreign I had no idea how to pronounce “Villa Savoye” to the locals and get directions. I must have tried it six or seven times.

"Ou est la Villa Savoye, s'il vous plait?"

Smiley smile, eye contact, eye contact, smiley smile, pause. Nothing. Try again.

"Ou est la Villa Savoye, s'il vous plait? Villa Savoye ? Savoye ? Villa? "

Zip. Try more eye contact, no blinking this time, give a final flourish with a post “medication time” One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest head wobble (as works with African hotel staff in Tanzania). Still zip. Go to visuals… Get out pen. Draw house from memory. Two horizontals. A strip window. Five sticks rammed up the bottom. A curvy lash across the top to finish.

"Ici, madame. Ici. Villa Savoye. S'il vous plait. Ou est la Villa Savoye?" Pointy at paper gestures. CLICK. RESULT. Lights on.

Here's how it is.

Savoye isn't said Savoy, like Savaloy. Or Roy. Or Toy. Oi.

Savoye is said Wah. Sav-Wah, through your throat and nose simultaneously. Wah. Sav-wah.

"Ooooh, non, non, non. Villa Sav-wah. Ha ha ha. Non non non non. Villa Sav-wah! Sav-wah, Sav-wah!!! Villa Sa-voy, ha ha ha. Non non non, Sav-wah."

Je suis une muppet.

FABULOUS SENSE OF PLACE.

And why is the Villa Savoye so amazing and worth a train yomp out of Paris into the heart of commuting French speaking land? Just look at it. It's incredible. And not only is it incredible today, think how incredible it was back in NINETEEN TWENTY NINE ! That’s when it was designed and built. Before the days of electric lawn mowers and extension cables. And Dulux. And woodchip wallpaper. And Habitat. B&Q. Telly. Before all that. Over 40 years before the first Vauxhall Viva parked outside the Crossroads Motel. Just 30 years after the first drunk staggered into the Rovers Return on Coronation Street.

1929.

And if you think the outside is amazing, then just wait until you take a look at the insides.

Did Poissy and the Villa Savoye turn out to be another highlight on this trip to France? Did it. It was another fresh out of the books and "there", "presto", "wham", "in your face", "in real life" experience. An abstract architecture exam question rising from the turf, speaking quietly, yet assertively, "Young Man. Does thou knoweth why I appear in architecture exam questions?" Yes, yes Villa Savoye, I do now know why you are in architecture exam questions, I do. I truly do.

Thank you Le Corbusier, monsieur, thank you. For when we Brits were shoving sea side ice lollies on our sticks, and when the Texans were thrusting State Fair cheesy sausages onto theirs, you decided to perch a clients' holiday villa on top of yours.

P.S. Get this. Since visiting, photographing and writing the above, I've made it into a Vincent Scully memorial DVD with that same photo up there. It featured about three quarters of the way in. For about three seconds. How ironic. Didn't even attend the lectures yet my holiday photo ends up in a televised one. Name on the credits.

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