Hector Guimard – Page 2 – { feuilleton }

Hector Guimard elevations

Design for the Facade of Societé Immobilière de la Rue Modern, No. 6 (1909).

Drawings by French architect and designer Hector Guimard (1867–1942), the man who gave Paris those plant-like entrances to the Metro stations. The examples here can be seen in greater detail at the Google Art Project where there’s a few more of his works including his typically organic smoking bench. One thing I like about the architectural drawings is seeing the way he stylised his lettering. Frank Lloyd Wright used to do the same on his plans but I doubt there are any architects today who do the same.

Elevation of an Apartment Building, Société Immobilière, rue Moderne (now rue Agar) (1909–11).

Rear Facade, Castel d’Orgeval, Parc Beauséjour, near Paris: Elevation (1904).

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Hector Guimard sketches
• Temples for Future Religions by François Garas
• Elizabetes Iela 10b, Riga
• Atelier Elvira
• Louis Bonnier’s exposition dreams
• The Maison Lavirotte
• The House with Chimaeras

Hector Guimard sketches

Projet pour la couverture Revue d’art (1899).

French architect and designer Hector Guimard (1867–1942) is most renowned today for his entrances to the Paris Metro but his work extended from architecture to interior and graphic design, much of it a superior application of the Art Nouveau style. Le cercle Guimard is a site devoted to the designer’s work (French-only for now) while these sketches are from a substantial collection at the Musée d’Orsay, Paris.

Projet de demi-canapé pour Mme Legrand (1900).

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Temples for Future Religions by François Garas
• Elizabetes Iela 10b, Riga
• Atelier Elvira
• Louis Bonnier’s exposition dreams
• The Maison Lavirotte
• The House with Chimaeras

The Maison Lavirotte

More Art Nouveau and more Paris…. I can’t believe I missed this place when I was in Paris for a week, staying just a few streets away. The building is at 29 Avenue Rapp in the 7th arrondissement and I crossed that street several times when walking to the Champs de Mars and the Eiffel Tower.

The architect was Jules Lavirotte (1864–1929) and the building was named after him following its construction in 1901. His other works aren’t as excessively florid as this, nor do they display the Nouveau elegance of contemporaries such as Hector Guimard, so this façade may owe more to the capitulations of fashion than innate style. The attractively unclad figures on the pediment cock their hips at passers-by in a provocative manner that would never be allowed in British architecture of the period, and the door has some great details with stylised peacocks between the windows and a huge brass lizard for the handle.

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Paris V: Details

Final Paris posting here, gathering up more of the better photos.

Walk down any residential street and you’ll see amazing doors like this that lead to the courtyards of apartment blocks. All the decorations are different, as are the brass door-handles emblazoned with human or animal heads. You could spend months photographing them.

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