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Journal DWIV Eileen Gray

Explore our Journal, a seasonal collection of images and musings that invites you to see Egg Collective through a new lens.

 

DESIGNIGN WOMEN IV — Eileen Gray’s House for Two Sculptors

 
 
 
 

“I was not a pusher and maybe that’s the reason I did not get the place I should have had.”- Eileen Gray

As a celebration of our fourth exhibition in the Designing Women Series, we invite you to trace the threads connecting past and present as we delve into Eileen Gray’s archive and resurrect a rarely seen set of architectural plans she created in 1933.

Fortune is a reoccurring theme in our design process, and fittingly, this project came to life through a serendipitous chain of events. It began with what seemed banal — a search for a living work of female-authored architecture where we could photograph our most recent designs. That search came up short, and without us initially noticing opened up a rabbit hole that would us on a yearslong journey through Eileen Gray’s career and archives.

Dive deeper into that journey here

 
 
 
 

We’ve long explored the role of fortune in our design process, and fittingly, this project came to life through a serendipitous chain of events. It began with what seemed banal — a search for a living work of female-authored architecture where we could photograph our most recent designs. That search came up short, and without us initially noticing opened up a rabbit hole that would us on a yearslong journey through Eileen Gray’s career and archives.

Dive deeper into that journey here

search for a female authored fter discovering a set of plans As an expansion of their long-standing Designing Women series, the three co-founders of Egg Collective contacted the museums holding Gray’s archives to realize her plans for the House for Two Sculptors. The project aims to exemplify ideas sketched out by Gray but never completed in her lifetime. Doing so entailed retracing the marks left by Eileen’s hand, as well as the study of her aesthetic and ethos in order to digitally bring to life the House for Two Sculptors. The resulting images took over nine months to complete and are the outcome of a careful dialogue with the documents, history, and spirit of Eileen Gray.

Intrigued by Gray’s mention of an “egg-shaped” atelier, Egg Collective began a years-long journey to digitally realize the design. With permission, they meticulously studied Gray’s aesthetic, values, and legacy, retracing her original vision while also highlighting her influence on generations of designers.

As an expansion of their long-standing Designing Women series, the three co-founders of Egg Collective contacted the museums holding Gray’s archives to realize her plans for the House for Two Sculptors. The project aims to exemplify ideas sketched out by Gray but never completed in her lifetime. Doing so entailed retracing the marks left by Eileen’s hand, as well as the study of her aesthetic and ethos in order to digitally bring to life the House for Two Sculptors. The resulting images took over nine months to complete and are the outcome of a careful dialogue with the documents, history, and spirit of Eileen Gray.

Designing Women IV showcases this process through photorealistic renderings and a physical exhibition at the collective’s Tribeca Gallery, opening May 15, 2024. The show features vignettes inspired by House for Two Sculptors, alongside Egg Collective’s own work and that of two contemporary sculptors — Taylor Kibby and Molly Haynes — offering viewers a chance to experience a once-unrealized vision reimagined for today.

 
 

Throughout her long and prolific career, Gray had the opportunity to complete only two other architectural assignments, robbing the world of a clearer efflorescence of her creative vision. Disrupted by war and stymied by sexism, the breadth, beauty andsheer originality of her work was nearly lost to history - often being attributed to either Badovici or Corbusier. In fact, for much of her life, Gray’s designs existed at the margins of the field she helped shape.

One of the architectural works that never made it past pencil on paper is a project entitled the House for Two Sculptors. Conceived of in 1933, the House for Two Sculptor’s furthest evolution is documented in four hand-drawn elevations, one plan, and one chipboard model. Little more is known about the project. Its clients, site, and broader inspiration have been lost to history.

Upon her passing at the age of 98, the House for Two Sculptors lived on in Eileen Gray’s archive as a rarely published set of drawings. It was in one of those publications that ninety years after its conception Egg Collective’s co-founders discovered the design. Seeing that the house was designed around an “egg-shaped” atelier, the trio became enamoured with the project and set out on a journey to contact the museums holding Gray’s archive to realize her vision. Stephanie Beamer recalls, “When we began there were many unknowns - one of which was where and how this project would live once complete. We did not set out knowing our destination, just that we’d discovered a journey we needed to take.”

The first step in realizing Gray’s design entailed bringing her drawings of the House for Two Sculptors into the computer where they were traced by hand. Using the documents in Gray’s archive for reference, the digitized drawings were then translated into a three-dimensional software where a basic model of the home was created. That model then served as the basis for the next step of the project where every element of the home, including its scale, site, materiality, interior detailing, and overall aesthetic, would be researched and designed.

 
 
 
 

As designers, these four dimensions describe what we do and how we spend our time. We measure. We contemplate scale. We consider hours of labor. We look back at what has come before, and we make plans for something that is yet to be. 

In this way, design can function as a form of time travel. Exploring pasts and predicting futures. 

 
 
 
 

One clear example of this was our 2024 exhibition Designing Women IV: Eileen Gray’s House for Two Sculptors, where we reached across time to realize an unbuilt work of architecture designed 90 years prior by Eileen Gray.

 
 
 
 
 

We devoted almost two years to this project. Those years resulted in the fourth exhibition in our Designing Women Series, and in our latest design, the Eileen Mirror. Inspired by Gray’s textiles, the Mirror has a graphically patterned solid cork frame and is available in multiple dimensions. 

 
 
 
 
 

Crystal’s Journal 

12.12.23

I am six months pregnant with my first child. Often I feel the baby rolling around inside me and I silently ask “what are you thinking” as I reach down to feel a kick or swirl move across my skin. It’s a silent question sent knowing no answer will be murmured in reply. 

These one way conversations, had internally, but perhaps capable of connection? I guess I am practiced in them as of late. I’ve also been talking to Eileen Gray. 

Just today I received the last of the completed renderings of her “House for Two Sculptors” in my inbox. It’s the culmination of a project that has been underway for almost exactly 9 months. Another “gestational” period during which I’ve attempted to cross the void — and communicate with someone unable to communicate with me. Eileen died in 1976 at the age of 98. I was born 8 years later. Our times never crossed here on Earth. I was flipping through a book on her just yesterday. It’s quite thick / extensive, and I was struck that this book also post-dates her. She died not knowing the breadth of the legacy she was leaving behind — the designers, like myself, that she’d inspire — the books cataloguing her life and work that would be written — or the projects and exhibitions her archive would spawn. 

The book that initiated our project was a slim one that highlighted just a small selection of her life’s work. We were researching un-built architecture by female designers and flipped to a page with a few floorpans laid out next to a black and white image of an architectural model. These plans stood out immediately as they showed an “egg-shaped” atelier connected to a modest yet thoughtful residence. 

It felt like a sign. Or, maybe, a message? sent out 90 years ago. 

I’ve spent the last 9 months trying to decode and translate that message. I’ve asked Eileen questions silently while tracing her marks and studying the photographs of her designs. Noting her preferred color palette, her strict but welcoming compositions and her fearlessness. She was SO modern, and SO brilliant. All the while asking her to guide me. 

“Eileen, what is this line supposed to represent?”

“Eileen, is it ok if we do this?”

“Can we bring this project to life for you?”

“What were you visualizing”

“What were you thinking”

 I like to think she has heard me, somehow, and that this project / these renderings are her answers. Her hand there all along invisibly guiding mine. 

At the beginning, back in March of 2023, when we set out to realize her vision, there were many unknowns - one of which was where and how this project would “live” once complete. We did not set out knowing our destination, just that we’d discovered a journey we needed to take. 

We know now that this will be the focus of our fourth “Designing Women”, an exhibition that will open in May of 2024. I am due in March, almost one year to the day from the start of this journey with Eileen.  The resulting exhibition will open during my maternity leave - a whole new journey I’ll be undertaking with my husband. He is a lover of history and often says to me “we live in history, and history lives in us.” I take this to mean that our journeys do overlap with those who came before, that perhaps the layers of time aren’t so thick that we can’t break through, and that the answers to our questions are around and within us if we are willing to do the seeking. 

 
 
 
 
 
 

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