Docomomo International is glad to announce that the Villa E-1027 located in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, France, design by Eileen Gray (1929) is fully restored and saved from demolition.

Often ill treated by its successive owners, one of whom was murdered on the spot, the villa, emptied of its furniture, was in a severely degraded condition when it was acquired in 1999 by the Conservatoire du Littoral, a coastline conservation body that is part of France’s Ministry of Ecological and Inclusive Transition, which already owned the Cabanon. A decade later, a decision was made to restore the villa, which had been modified by its interim owner and fallen into disrepair. In 2014 the Conservatoire du Littoral called upon Michael Likierman, a retired British businessman and former chief executive of Habitat France who had previously renovated a historic house and garden in Menton to oversee the renovation and return the properties to their original state. Likierman set up the Cap Moderne Association, of which he is president. Launched in 2015, the restoration project has unfolded for six months at a time from October to April each year; in the summer months, the properties have remained open to visitors. According to an agreement signed in 2017, the Centre of National Monuments is managing the visits and will take over the site in 2020 once the final renovations have been completed. Now an outstanding cultural and natural site know as Cap Moderne and consisting of Eileen Gray’s Villa E-1027, Le Corbusier’s Cabanon and Unité de camping, and the bar-restaurant Etoile de Mer, all of them mythical architectural icons in surroundings of outstanding natural beauty. Like the villa, the gardens and land is a listed historic monument.

From iconichouses.org