Gabriel Guevrekian
[2] He was actively involved in the early stages of the Congrès International d'Architecture Moderne (CIAM) which he chaired from 1928 until 1932, a position appointed him by le Corbusier (Turner 1996).
He designed governmental and public buildings, including Kakh Dadgostari Tehran, residences and villas, of which little is documented.
He returned to Europe in 1937 and worked in London for three years, but due to the advent of World War II none of his projects were realised.
(Wesley 1981 p. 17) The Jardin d'Eau et de Lumiere for the 1925 Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs was an equilateral triangle broken up into triangular elements.
In the centre were four tiered reflecting pools decorated by Robert Delaunay[3] that sat below a rotating, internally illuminated sphere.
These were surrounded by tiered plantings and hemmed in by two low walls of small triangles of glass in white and shades of pink.
The Villa commanded great views of the Côte d’Azur and Noailles wished to contrast this strongly with an enclosed and architectonic ensemble that framed the natural whilst delineating ownership.
As Imbert points out "due to the paucity of written evidence, the garden designers’ intentions remain largely undocumented; that they appreciated the implications of the cubist movement for their field, however, is most certain.
(Imbert 1997 p. 169) Criticisms of the work as being too literal a translation of, or direct reference to, cubist painting is both unfair and imperceptive (and usually based on Wesley's critique or similar ideas).
[citation needed] Dodds also reads the form as being a "straight-up" axonometric rather than the "shallow and compressed" perspective that Wesley draws directly from Picasso.
(Dodds 2002 p. 191) Guevrekian uses the axonometric, a popular architectural type where all measurements remain true in an idealised form.
He develops this idea further with Robert and Sonia Delaunay, whose simultaneist art he draws upon and whom he later works with to form the purist movement.
