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Hinged Things: Concerning the Interior(s) of Eileen Gray

Schilling, Andrew A.

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2004, MS ARCH, University of Cincinnati, Design, Architecture, Art and Planning : Architecture.
Eileen Gray built few buildings yet numerous critics drew her work into their concerns. She witnessed this and when, near the end of her life, her work again caught public attention, she burned many of her private papers. Her career bears the imprint of this manner of avoidance. The aim of this thesis is to re-interpret her life and her work, unfolding issues that unify the concerns of both. Chapter One reviews existing scholarship on Eileen Gray including prominent contributions from Carolyn Constant, Joseph Rykwert, Beatriz Colomina and others. Several of these authors contrast Gray to Le Corbusier and Adolph Loos. Chapter Two examines Gray's houses designed for herself and their significance as hinge points in her life. The circumstances wherein she abandoned them and created new ones, fit into a larger pattern of relationships and retreats, and of her own identity creation. Her history with her father, with Paris and London, and with her lovers, figures significantly in her life of retreats. Chapter Three investigates Gray's use of language which, typically overlooked or dismissed, reveals her concern with her own life. The witty and hermetic names she chose for her houses and for her furniture, as well as the peculiar passages she inscribed on walls, reveal both Gray's work and her relationship to the world as a game of hiding. Chapter four examines Gray's use of the hinge-an idea she developed from the mid-1910's to the end of her career. She applied hinges at various scales, sometimes literally, sometimes merely in allusion. With hinges she invoked closets and hiding, human touch as manipulation, and bodily mass and movement. Ultimately, the privacy, functionality, and practicality evident in her work derived from more emotional concerns-the individualistic and privacy seeking drives of her psyche.
Dr. Patrick Snadon (Advisor)
119 p.

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Schilling, A. A. (2004). Hinged Things: Concerning the Interior(s) of Eileen Gray [Master's thesis, University of Cincinnati]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1092669500

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Schilling, Andrew. Hinged Things: Concerning the Interior(s) of Eileen Gray. 2004. University of Cincinnati, Master's thesis. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1092669500.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Schilling, Andrew. "Hinged Things: Concerning the Interior(s) of Eileen Gray." Master's thesis, University of Cincinnati, 2004. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1092669500

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)