Description
An apartment with terraces in the Clarté building in Geneva
This apartment is located in the famous Clarté building, also known as the “Maison de verre”, an iconic complex designed by Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret in 1932. It was listed as a historic monument in 1986 and became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2016.
This through flat spans 169 m² and has 81 m² of terraces. It is one of the most attractive properties in the building.
It opens onto an entrance hall with cupboards leading to a sunny living room opening onto a first terrace, which has been converted into a summer lounge and dining room. Completely open-plan, the space includes a large lounge with a suspended fireplace and custom-made bookcase, a dining area and an open-plan fitted kitchen.
The master suite includes a bedroom, dressing room and bathroom and opens onto a 20 m² terrace. A second bedroom with shower room is currently used as a study. A secondary, adjoining space houses a bedroom, a shower room, a lounge, a kitchenette and a 20 m² terrace.
A cellar completes this property.
Renovated to a high standard, this apartment boasts excellent architectural features, including generous volumes, high ceilings and a range of quality materials. Its meticulous finishes blend perfectly with the Corbusian style of the “Clarté” building;
The flat also benefits from the building’s facilities. In particular, it has attractive stairwells with zenithal lighting: the light from the transparent glass slabs on the 8th floor is diffused down to the ground floor thanks to the transparent landings and glass brick steps. On the glazed façades, galleries of wooden planks act as sunshades and help to regulate the temperature of the interior spaces.
Le Clarté is located in the Eaux-Vives district, right in the heart of Geneva city centre.
It has all the local amenities.
A modern work
“This building is a landmark, a milestone of modern architecture in a passéist milieu.” (October 30, 1932). It was in these terms that Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret presented, for the editions of L’Art en Suisse, the Clarté rental building, built in Geneva in 1932.
After several aborted architectural projects, Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret were entrusted by the entrepreneur Edmond Wanner with the construction of a building in the so-called Villereuse triangle in Geneva. An example of constructive rationalisation, all the elements of Clarté were prefabricated in series; from the “Eclair” up-and-over doors manufactured by Edmond Wanner’s factory to the “Nevada” glass blocks made by Saint-Gobain, the site mobilised several industries in the interests of efficiency.
Le Corbusier implements some of his five points defined in Vers une architecture (1923): the flat roof, the free plan and facade, banded windows.
An innovative housing manifesto
Following in the footsteps of Le Corbusier and Jeanneret’s research into new forms of housing, the Clarté building is intended to be a “villa building”. Aimed at an affluent social class, the building comprises 50 homes of various types, from studios to large nine-room duplexes, all with an original layout. This involved abandoning the uniform division into storeys, the unity being broken up by variable ceiling heights. The façades and internal walls, freed from any load-bearing function thanks to the 280 reinforced concrete columns, allow great freedom in the layout of the flats;
A major restoration project
Despite several threats of demolition (in 1968 and in the 1980s), the building was listed as a historic monument on 12 November 1986 and was added to UNESCO’s World Heritage List in 2016.
The Swiss architect Pascal Häusermann, famous for his visionary ideas and organic architecture (bubble houses), was a major contributor to its renovation. After an initial intervention in the building (1953-1954), between 1975 and 1977 he worked with Bruno Camoletti on a major restoration. The architects carried out a number of technical renovations, replacing the glass blocks in the stairwells with square glass slabs and dividing the attic ‘wagon’ into two flats.
Technical info
Price on request
Fees payable by the vendor
Co-ownership
Taxe Foncière : NC
Heating : gas
Intercom
Digicode
F.L.C. / Adagp, 2024
ECD: NC
