Who killed Eileen Gray? E1027 and the making of an Architecture Methodology

Abstract

This thesis looks at a E1027, a 1929 villa designed by Irish born architect, Eileen Gray. E1027 will serve as a case study for this thesis to assist in design based research. Peter Downtown discusses research as an investigation or inquiry into things, a definition that supports the ongoing and inquisitive peeling back of the existing as a way to understand something new. E1027 will be analysed as a crime scene and pursued as an investigation. The work will be dissected into a series of suspects, tools and spaces that influenced both the building and the architect, in a ‘whodunnit’ style of . These components of the investigation will accumulate into a body of work that contributes to a new design knowledge, through the making of a structured methodology. This methodology will be used to inform the design of an architecture school for women. Hand built maquette’s derived from existing details, furnishing and layouts found within E1027 will be analysed and multiplied as a way to generate an understanding of how Gray worked, and how her work can contribute to new architectures. The forensic act of dusting off and reexamining a work of architecture looks at the possibility of how we can learn from architects and the buildings they create. Integrating an architect with the author of a new work, presents the opportunity for a method of combined architectural authorship that derives from an existing body of knowledge.