Michael Likierman

“Eileen Gray decided that she wanted to build a house of her own. in 1925.  She was a successful designer, but she designed interiors and all of a sudden she felt that she actually wanted to build a house and she heard of a site that was available here just down the path from the station.  It was really remote its only access was the small path that was called the ‘smuggler’s path’ that leads around the coast so she built her a modern concrete house – the new material being concrete – she built that using extraordinary traditional methods of access.  There were no lorries to get there, they couldn’t do anything except bring everything by hand.  So, its importance as a symbol of early 20th Century architecture is enormous.

Any architectural student, worth his salt dreams, of going at least once.  And Mohammed Jameel was extraordinarily enthusiastic at the idea of trying to set-up something that would give a structure for these visits and where they can have facilities for their research as well as having an extremely easy access so that they can see observe and feel the quality of the places.

Having finished the restoration of e1027 we thought it was really worth doing a book to chart it.  Mohammed Jameel thought that was an excellent idea and has decided to help us with the book and is helping us to produce it.

You know when you talk about institutions and anniversaries, it’s sort of inevitably you find connections and it just seemed so appropriate when we were able to put together the 90th anniversary of e1027 and the 75th anniversary of the Jameel Family Philanthropy and those two together will make this project, which I hope will be interesting architects all over the world for the next 75 or 90 years.”

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