Raymond Loewy with a 1957 Coupé prototype built on a BMW 507
THE MANY LIVES OF RAYMOND LOEWY
I first came across the personae of Raymond Loewy - not through the Coca-Cola bottle, or gleaming automobiles designs - but by its own architect; Albert Frey.
More precisely, it is a Julius Shulman picture of a pool, flowing from the outside in, that arouse my interest, among many photographs of midcentury homes in Palm Springs. Set in a party scene, it puts together what is quintessential about living in the desert in this period of time; an hedonistic lifestyle for self-made men, with arid mountains and canyons as background. You would almost expect aristocracy appearances and a pool bar, just as in a Slim Aarons picture.
But more than an enjoyable and by consequent temporary lifestyle, it is a certain architecture that was displayed in these pictures. And precisely the one of Albert Frey.
Born in Zürich, Switzerland at the beginning of the century, Albert Frey came to be a highly influential architect after his move to the United States and the Los Angeles area at the end of the thirties. Assuredly influenced by European movements de Stijl and the Bauhaus, as well as architect le Corbusier, for whom he worked in Paris, his lightweight architecture was undoubtedly allowed to come to fruition in the desert. Single family houses were rethought there after World War II, apologies of domestic activities in a paradoxically arid environment. He even pushed the concept of individual-living further with Frey House II, a small structure perched above the city of Palm Springs, and made of a unique 75sqm bedroom, with the key elements of the bed and the swimming pool acting as centrepieces for the work. In a very similar manner, the Loewy Residence in Palm Springs, built for the designer by Frey in 1947, also displays the swimming pool as a centrality, only with more living and bedrooms located around it, and an astonishing succession of curves going inside and out the house. Located in the much coveted neighbourhood of Little Tuscany, at the foot of the San Jacinto mountains, the house is sided by the homes of almost mythological figures of Hollywood and industrial royalty; Elvis Presley lived in the parallel street, and Max Palevsky further up the road in an immaculate Craig Ellwood house. Marilyn Monroe, Frank Sinatra and Kirk Douglas all lived in nearby Old Las Palmas. The Kaufmann Residence, by architect Richard Neutra, sides Loewy's home westwardly; it is probably the most published and talk about work of mid-century architecture in Palm Springs and beyond. Loewy's house, like much of the latter, was unequivocally made for leisure and enjoyments, in a resort town boasting an average of 300 days of sunshine per annum. More than just a display of a successful business and social life, it was also a promotion of a certain way of life. The innocent and graphically absorbing pictures of Julius Shulman, showing the house in context as it should be - with a fully stocked bar and lounging girls in bikinis -, are participating in this very promotion. The apparent lightness of the activities, supported by the same lightness of the architecture, with its transparent curtains free-flowing in the wind, demonstrate an ambiance and state of mind typical of this period of time, when economy was growing and constructions booming.
Frey came to build a very respected portfolio of homes in the desert, and is still celebrated today as one of the most successful architect of the middle of the century, but few of his work came close to the notoriety of the Loewy Residence.
Then, once again my path crossed the one traced by this multifaceted man. On a birthday trip to a much self-coveted hôtel in the middle of a forest near Paris, I kept reading - on internet searches or when browsing the hotel’s library - the name of Raymond Loewy. By now familiar with it, having endlessly wondered about his Palm Springs home, written about it and even paid a visit to the desert, I assuredly didn’t let go of another quest on its - it seeemed - fantastic life. I heard the property was once owned by him, the very character that I had encountered over academic researches in London and field trips to California. Suddenly, his life and story were transplanted in the middle of the french countryside, where I happened to find myself as well. The property was beautiful; it featured a farm-like building, set amid luxuriant forests and a sprawling wildlife, a spa in that same low-ceiling farm building, endless barns for horses, fields for volleyball, archery, and even - my favourite - a pétanque strip, so very much French. Breakfast was glorious as well, as you would expect. You truly felt like you were in your countryside home, with a whole bunch of fun friends, plus fury ones: horses, ducks, dogs and cats.
By now remembering that I had already knew about the place over previous researches, the paradoxical and astonishing geographic and stylistic oppositions of the two properties didn’t help connect the information together. As I only knew the Raymond Loewy who owned this small modern palace in the American desert next to the Kaufmann house, it was indeed surprising to think of him as a man who would live in the Rambouillet forest - although it is a truly wonderful place. One morning, I simply asked if the employees and what seemed to be the manager of the hôtel knew about someone called Raymond Loewy. If they never heard the name at the reception, the person responsible for taking guests on horse rides - what a wonderful thing - was affirmative:
"Yes, yes! The house belonged to Raymond Loewy." If I were happy to know that, I wasn't completely satisfied, as the domain contained many houses, that seemed dispatched and could have belong to distinctive pieces of land in the past. So I researched furthermore down the Internet, in order to know what used to be this fascinating man's life in France. It was the stud farm, the Haras de la Cense, which was now part of the hôtel, that used to actually be Loewy's house. The property was bought by William Kriegel, the current stud founder and also pioneer in horsemanship, directly to Raymond Loewy in 1980.
It was so: the farm was not his home, it was the estate further down the road, on a path taken by horses and hotel employees only, a rather intimist, hidden but nonetheless grand home, much like the Palm Springs home. The two properties (Raymond Loewy's one and the farm we were actually staying at) were merged much later on, when hôtel plans were in the making by Kriegel and his associate. So further down the road we went, on bikes rented at the farm/hôtel. The dog followed us, along with birds. After succeeding in making the connections with the famed Raymond Loewy, an emblematic man of what the XXth century used to represent, with today's world, I was to look at a deeper history of the house. Built in the XVIth century for the king Henri Vth and his mistreess Gabrielle d'Estrées, the house, although surrounded by stables and barns, had a manor-like aspect, an almost aristocratic appearance in a way. We unfortunately couldn't get a real hold of what the building looked like. I was eager to look at its architecture features, but can only speak from what I found online, or the very few and instantaneous peaks I took from the road, as we were driving back to Versailles, where I lived at that time. The house, although having quite bare, almost austere walls and features, was nonetheless bearing ornaments, and one can imagine how it was and still is lived in; with windows opened, flowers blooming and dogs barking in the fields around. Much of the photographic elements where I can source these information from are held in a mysterious and exciting box apparently and appropriately named "4: Homes - La Cense, France", itself in the Audiovisual Collections and Digital Initiatives department of the Hagley Museum and Library, in Wilmington, Delaware. They seem to have come themselves from Raymond Loewy's own collection of photographs and audiovisual materials, accessed by the institution in 2004. The series dates back to 1935, and is a great witness of daily life within the estate. One can see him outside with his dog, sitting in the living room with his then wife, Jean Thompson Bienfait, and friends. There are also beautiful interiors photographic essays, with pictures of dining and living rooms in still life effects. Loewy seemed to have lived at la Cense from ... to the sale date. He was to die a few years later, in 1986, in his Monte Carlo-apartment, at age 92.
While the two places were havens for luxurious retreats, set amid lush and calm sceneries, they were worlds apart. The same man, appearing to have had several different lives, and lived to the fullest, also adapted his home to his environment, and lived according to different traditions and cultures, under different skies. The Palm Springs home was modern to the core, emblematic of this revolutionary style later called midcentury modernism, while the estate in Rambouillet displayed wooden upholstered sofas and other antiques, in the utmost French tradition. The contrast couldn't be more striking. The house is now owned by Kriegel, who lives amongst what he's built; a beautiful place for apprenticeship and conviviality. I felt lucky to have discovered this piece of land near my Parisian home.
Loewy succeeded in associating his name with covetable places to live; and was in a way at the avant-garde of what the good life could mean; space and comfort, social activities but also places for isolation. I am amazed at the taste one has to have in order to live in such places; both successful in being simplistic and sophisticated at the same time.
While his design exploits were certainly much valuable and highly influential in the world of industrial design, one should see in retrospective the places inhabited by such a man to comprehend his life at the fullest. His houses and properties around the world acted as a well-written autobiography, and maybe no-one could ever describe him better than his homes and the way they were built. One should also see such a life on a grandiose scale as a valuable life lesson; it seemed he lived the life he had chosen for himself, and that wherever it may be, in a busy desert town east of Los Angeles, or a countryside haven in a French forest.
