Villa Baizeau 1929 (built version)

Le Corbusier – Villa in Carthage, 1929 – Final version (built)

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 he 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 wanted 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 the mayor of Stuttgart to obtain information about the Weissenhof Siedlung exhibition that was being held in the fall.
In the same period 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.
On January 23, 1928, Baizeau signed an agreement with Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret in which the construction of the villa was decided, work on which would begin in March. 
In addition to drawing up plans, architects were also responsible for estimates and had to prepare a detailed description of the construction work.
Le Corbusier failed to respect the second part of the contract and left the Tunisian company to supervise the construction of the house. 
Detailed instructions accompanied the contract: the instructions included drawings for the ground floor and first floor showing the layout of the rooms desired by Baizeau, a map of the site and a series of photographs of the area and the surrounding area.
It appears that neither Le Corbusier nor his assistants ever visited the site, nor ever saw the completed building.
For this reason, the close correspondence between the architect and the client Baizeau is important, as it allowed us to understand the path of the various design choices.

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.