1995

The naming of the house embodies the machine, synthesizing a personal identification of authorship with a mechanical coding via their initials (E=Eileen, 10=Jean, 2=Badovici, 7=Gray). Her name encloses his, forming a framework for him to inhabit. The intimacy of their relationship is ambiguous, coded, hidden from the public even in the act of publicizing their collaboration. The house can be read as their two bodies intertwined, a mechanical body. The plan suggests the extension of their limbs and organs. "...qu'il retrouve dans la construction architecturale la joie de se sentir lui-même, comme en un tout qui le prolonge et le complête"(Gray & Badovici, 20). It is a kind of prosthesis, incomplete and senseless without the body for whom it was designed.

The architect of Valery's dialogue, "Eupalinos" had a similar relationship with his builders. "His instructions and their acts fitted together so happily that it seemed as though these men were nothing more nor less than his limbs" (Valery, "Eupalinos, or The Architect," 70).Bodies and words of architect, builder, inhabitant were incomplete in themselves, existing as a network of relations. "Les langues mineures n'existent pas en soi : n'existant que par rapport à une langue majeure. Ce sont aussi des investissements de cette langue pour qu'elle devienne elle-même mineure" (Deleuze, Guattari,132). The language of mechanization was inhabited to refute the autonomous authority with which it was being asserted by many (particularly German) Modernists. For Gray, the house itself is read first through its relationship with the body. Mechanization is rendered dependent, minor, mortal as it is engaged prosthetically. It becomes a kind of body: "une fenêtre sans volets est un oeuil sans paupières" (Gray & Badovici, 28).

The main "Living room" [they use the English term within the French text] is not only a room made for living, but a room that is alive, with its moveable limbs, breathing and seeing through its shuttered windows. Like the boudoir/room, 1922, it accomodates many functions: bedroom, study, salon, bath, dressing room. Functions range from the most private to the most public. "La grande pièce - Bien quelle soit très petite,elle devait être agencée de manière à permettre à son occupant de recevoir des amis et de leur donner toutes leurs aises. Le style camping permettait seul de résoudre cette difficulté..." Body and house are again embedded within '"la construction d'un continum de variation"(Deleuze, Guattari, 131).