Villa Snégaroff, designed in 1930 by the Polish-Jewish architect Bruno Elkouken, was the first modernist residence built on the former Treviso family estate of more than 200 hectares, which the Seine department had acquired seven years earlier. Together with other suburban villas built in the region, it formed a modern garden city.

Genesis of the creation

To finalise the restoration of the Château de Sceaux estate, the council of the Department of the Seine (Seine) set aside more than 900 plots of land totalling more than 72 hectares for new development in the municipalities of Sceaux and Antony, formerly part of the Treviso estate. On each plot, the construction of one single-family house was permitted, leaving builders full freedom in their choice of architectural style.

As a result of the restrictions introduced and the meticulous care taken to preserve the landscape character of the establishment, many luxury villas were built between the wars on plots located around the historic park designed by King Louis XIV's gardener, André Le Nôtre. Some of the best-known developments include the Villa Charles Mauduit by Auguste Perret, the Villa Colboc designed by Henri and Geneviève Colboc, the Villa Trapenard by Robert Mallet-Stevens and the Villa Snégaroff by Bruno Elkouken. These projects were a continuation of avant-garde thinking in Sceaux, the manifestations of which could be seen in the form of André Le Nôtre's garden, Jules Hardouin-Mansart's orangery and turn-of-the-century buildings designed by Victor Baltard, François Hennebique, Hector Guimard or Eugène Beaudouin.

The silhouette of the principal Dimitri Snégaroff

Elkouken was commissioned for the villa at 13 avenue du Président Franklin Roosevelt in 1929 by Dimitri Snégaroff, a printer, publisher and co-founder of the Printers' Union (initially operating under the name Kooperativnaïa typografia soïouz). Snégaroff was the association's artistic director responsible for the selection of subject matter and performers. Over the years, he established a collection of works by representatives of the Ecole de Paris and the Surrealists.

Architecture of the Villa Snégaroff

The cubist villa, created for the Snégaroff family in 1930, was designed on a T-shaped plan. Its construction is based on two perpendicular cubes intersecting at right angles, which delimit the usable area of the house, and an annexed block consisting of a cuboid and a half-cylinder, in which the staircase is located. An open-plan space with a separate kitchen is planned for the ground floor, while the first floor has a bathroom and a three-room piano nobile overlooking the street and garden. The sophistication and simplicity of the layout, reminiscent of Robert Mallet-Stevens' realisations, was praised in the pages of L'Architecte and Architecture d'Aujourd'hui in 1934.