Echoes of Past Lives: Remembering a Tour of the Maison de Verre by Mary Vaughan Johnson

This article uses a first-person narrative account of a tour of Pierre Chareau’s Maison de Verre to reexamine the narratives surrounding the building. The Maison de Verre is a work resulting from a close relationship between its principal architect and the clients who commissioned it, Annie and Jean Dalsace. The house is renowned for its glass block façade and mechanized design, but this article shows that it is also an intimate recording of the lives and characters of its original occupants. These past lives are inscribed in the fabric of the space and in the choreography of the house’s mechanisms. The author’s experience of the space is framed by the account of our guide, the late Mary Vaughan Johnson. The recording of the tour maps the emergence of the narratives and the echoes of the past, inscribed in and imprinted on the building, as the author moves through the space.<br/><br/>