Robert Mallet Stevens 
(Paris, March 24, 1886 – Paris, February 8, 1945)

He was a French architect and designer, influenced by the architecture of Josef Hoffmann and by the Viennese secession. Showed his strong personality since his early studies at l' École Spéciale d'Architecture in Parigi, defending a modern and rational ideal of architecture and graduating in 1910.
After being been a furniture designer and a film production designer for almost twenty films, started working as architect from the half of 1920s, working for private customers only, with very few exceptions, like the fire station in Paris.
He was one of the founder of Union des Artistes modernes (UAM) in 1929, together with Francis Jourdain, René Herbst and others. The movement was based on a purity of lines and shapes, clearly in opposition with the decorativism of Art Nouveau, which later flowed in the international modern movement. During the Vichy regime he took refuge with his family in the south-east of France, in Penne d’Agenais (Lot et Garonne). The importance of his work as an architect has been recognized only after his death, when, the most of his works were left to abandonment (like Villa Cavrois). He has been a curious and polymorph architect, active in many sectors, both for the industry and for the commerce, for example on the design of the shop windows. From these experience he has kept an innovative concept of illumination which has treated as material itself. Parallel to this he has designated the sets of almost twenty films, like as L’Inhumaine (1924) and Le Vertige (1927), developing his own idea of interior design, as staged by the psycology of the characters. The exhibition of 1925 put Mallet  Stevens under the lights of the spotlights: the architect has signed many halls and structures, which distinguished themselves for their modernity, like as the exhibition halls. His name and work have remained linked to the bourgeois domestic architecture. Between 1923 and 1928 he has designed a villa for the earl of Noailles in Hyères and at the same time designed also a residential complex which has his own name, in the sixteenth arrondissment of Paris. Villa Cavrois, built between 1929 and 1932, achieved the top of his ideal. Thanks to the trust which Paul and Lucie Cavrois given him, Mallet Stevens built a masterpiece, both for the design process and for the building, for the interiors and the park. The work of Mallet Stevens was based on the modern architecture, many written works in support to his contemporaries witness this fact. He took the same commitment also in the creation of the Union des Artistes Moderne (1929) and for the magazine L’architecture d’aujourd’hui, which he helped to found and where he played an important role. Between 1930, Mallet Stevens was, together with Le Corbusier, one of the most famous architect. Despite the importance of his work, during the creation of the modern architectural thought, his work started being forgotten after his death in 1945.