Villa Jeanneret-Perret or Maison Blanche

Project

For this creation, Charles-Edouard Jeanneret abandoned the “fir tree” style and developed new concepts that he was to theorize a few years later in the “five points for a new architecture.”

Set on sloping ground with a view of La Chaux-de-Fonds and its surroundings, the house rests on its exterior walls and four central pillars,  forerunners of the free plan and pilotis. The horizontal rows of windows announce the principle of the long window. All structured differently, the facades are plastered and covered with whitewash. The roof is made of Eternit, a recently developed fibre cement material.

Placed over a basement where his father’s workshop was located, the house was on two levels with an attic and a roof space.

On the ground floor were the living and service rooms. The central axis, also called  by Jeanneret a “cathedral transept”, consists of an antechamber, the living room and the dining room and ends with a semi-circular projection opening onto the “summer room.”

Upstairs, where the bedrooms were also situated, Jeanneret reserved a room lit by a glass roof to use as his studio.

The house was extended on the outside by a garden and a path covered by a pergola. It was this arrangement that Jeanneret called a “summer room.”

The lower garden was also designed to provide a pathway to the house, a forerunner of the “architectural promenade.” Jeanneret worked very extensively on the interior fittings, the polychromy, the wallpaper and also the furniture (sofa, table, etc.). For his mother, Jeanneret designed a six-legged piano and a writing desk which is today at the Petite Villa sur le Lac Léman, the second house built for his parents. He also made a painted frieze for the fireplace, which has unfortunately disappeared.