What follows is a triptych in prose: a painting, a film, and another painting. At center, a film of an architect building a pavilion in a garden; on the left, an image of an old tree trunk; on the right, a handsome floral still life.

Perched on a rocky bluff along the southern coast of France, the modernist villa E-1027 occupies a singular position in architectural history—both a paradigmatic work of early modernism and a site of erasure, appropriation, and contested authorship.