Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret 1928

The Maison Planeix is a perfectly proportioned, squat terrace house that is at once grand in the symmetry of its entrance, balcony and overall facade, and modest in its scale and materials. It was built for Antonin Planeix, a sculptor of funerary monuments.

Le Corbusier 'used the formula "une maison/un palais" - "a house/a palace." He meant... the ennoblement of a basic house type through proportion to the point where it achieved monumentality... If there is a single Le Corbusier house of the 1920s that really deserves the description "une maison, un palais", it must surely be the Maison Planeix of 1924-8.

This stands on the avenue Masséna, a wide and noisy street to the east end of Paris. It is a miniature urban palace in effect and in intention: with a formal, symmetrical facade, an entrance axis, a piano nobile, an emphasized ground level and cornice, and even, at one stage of its design, a courtyard.'

William J.R. Curtis, Le Corbusier: Ideas and Forms, 1986

 

Simon Glynn 2001

How to visit

The Maison Planeix is a private house. It can be seen from the street, or inside by prior appointment only: call +33 1 45 83 73 50.

Take the metro line 7 to Porte d'Ivry. Leaving the station walk East along boulevard Masséna. You will find the Maison Planeix in the middle of a terrace in a few hundred meters on your left (North side of the road).

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