Machine à Amuser

In his book "Machine à Amuser. The Life and Death of the Beistegui Penthouse Apartment," Wim van den Bergh describes the genesis of the famous penthouse of the Franco-Mexican millionaire bachelor Charles de Beistegui. The penthouse was designed and built by Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret on the Champs-Élysées between 1929 and 1932. Van den Bergh traces the evolution of this icon of modern architecture, from the initial competition between Gabriel Guevrekian, André Lurçat, and Le Corbusier & Pierre Jeanneret to its eventual realization. He tells the story of a client's ambition to build a house dedicated to entertainment on one of the most prosperous streets in Paris.

Bureau Europa now translates this book into an exhibition. For Machine à Amuser is not only the story of a hitherto overlooked design by one of the most important architects of the twentieth century. It is also an amusing and recognizable game between client and architect. Developer Charles de Beistegui had his own, eccentric taste: an extremely carefully composed eclecticism that often clashed with the modernist beliefs of his architect. Like a kind of gentleman architect, De Beistegui increasingly took control of the design. Both the interaction during that process and the surreal final result are highlighted in the exhibition.

It is also a story about the haute bohème, the Parisian café society in which De Beistegui moved. His parties were extravagant and eccentric: the opening of his new palazzo in Venice in 1951 is still considered the ball of the century. (Charles himself welcomed his guests dressed as an eighteenth-century Venetian magistrate, complete with 40-centimeter-high platform shoes to mask his short stature.) The ups and downs of this select circle of extremely wealthy individuals, who are solely occupied with being occupied, were meticulously documented in magazines like Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar. It is in these publications that we mostly encounter the penthouse, more than in leading architectural publications. The exhibition illustrates this eccentric world with photos, film footage, original magazines, and objects.

Last but not least, Machine à Amuser is a story about drawing, and drawing as an architectural research method. Author and architect Wim van den Bergh has meticulously redrawn the penthouse. These drawings serve the reader of the book and the visitor to the exhibition, but also the researcher himself: in redrawing, he is confronted with the design in all its facets. It is, in the process, an exercise in careful observation. Thus, the drawing process becomes a way to understand the study object. The reconstruction drawing as an idea also holds a prominent place in the exhibition.

An eccentric client, a visionary architect, and a gifted storyteller: with these ingredients, Machine à Amuser turns architecture into a narrative. The exhibition adds a new layer to that narrative, complementing the splendid book by Wim van den Bergh.