Villa Baizeau 1928

Le Corbusier – Villa Baizeau, 1928 (First and second versions)

Villa Baizeau is located in the suburb of Tunis in Saint Monique (Carthage), is a residential house designed by the Swiss modernist architect Le Corbusier in 1928. The building is the architect's only work in Tunisia.
 Lucien Baizeau was the director of a major construction materials company “La Tunisoise Industrielle”. The company wanted to learn about the new revolutionary construction methods that were being tested in Europe. They intended to send one of their employees to Europe on a study trip. They wrote on November 6, 1927 to the French ambassador in Berlin and to the mayor of Stuttgart to obtain information about the Weissenhof Siedlung exhibition that had taken place in the autumn. At the same time Lucien Baizeau who spent long periods in France met with Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret in Paris. His aim was twofold: to learn as much as he could of Le Corbusier's methods and to commission him to build a villa in Tunis.
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In this PDF, in the chapter “The customer's pencil”, Professor Tim Benton describes in detail the events that led to the Villa Baizeau project.