Sarah and Michael Stein (brother to Gertrude Stein) were wealthy Americans living in Paris with a taste for modern art (notably Matisse) and a surprisingly bohemian lifestyle. They commissioned Le Corbusier to design a house, to be shared with the estranged wife of the government minister Anatole de Monzie in the rural suburb of Vaucresson, to the west of Paris. Drawings like this in coloured chalk are fairly rare in Le Corbusier’s work, since he only used them in the presentation of projects to clients at a moment when decisions had to be made. They were the speciality of Le Corbusier’s cousin and associate, Pierre Jeanneret.

The site was a typical suburban plot, 27 metres across and 186 metres deep. After experimenting with different plans, Le Corbusier settled on placing the house as a single block across the plot, at the end of a long drive. This elevation is for an unexecuted variant of the project, designed around 13 November 1926. The basic arrangement of the house, with the service entrance on the left and the main entrance on the right, has already been resolved. A strong geometric rhythm (ABABA), consisting of 5-metre and 2.5-metre bays, articulates the elevation and helps to organize the plan. In this variant, the entrance facade is shown with an extension on the left, at first-floor level, which extended the space of the kitchen. Compared to the finished design, this elevation is relatively fussy, with a range of different window shapes. In the next stage of the design process, the concrete structure (visible here as thin struts) is moved back from the facade, allowing for two rows of unbroken long windows on the first and second floors. The expression of the ABABA grid became considerably more subtle as a consequence.