LE COLLECTIONNEUR

Le Collectionneur

Delving into the art-deco district of Paris with Edouard Bernard and his 1985 Porsche 911 Carrera 3.2.

Hidden in a quiet, sprawling residence, typical of Paris’ south-west periphery, is an underground car park filled with museum-like automotive memorabilia and both a well-stocked library and bar (we are in France, after all). Yet this is exactly what Edouard Bernard has built over the past years in his allocated parking spaces.

In the dimly lit atmosphere sits diverse, joyful collections of model cars, aged motorcycles from the 1950s, pristine Courrèges racing suits, and collectible 1970s furniture that hints at Edouard’s past as a gallery owner. Among white modular sofas, plexiglass chairs, and lamps you’ll spot metallic Michel Cadestin furniture from the Centre Pompidou, or a Michel Guéranger-designed carpet. All this surrounded by intriguing street finds or childhood souvenirs; the whole place feel like a trip back in time.

Each item here points to an evidently curious mind that remains fascinated by the heydays of racing, but also of art, design, and fashion. Parts of his car collection have also found a home here, including a black 911 Carrera 3.2, our wheels for a tour around the architectural wonders of Boulogne-Billancourt later in the day. Edouard is its third owner since its arrival in Geneva in 1985, but that was a short stay: it has always lived in Paris, well-preserved and cared for. Edouard himself mostly uses it for countryside escapes to the Atlantic Coast or the Riviera, and has always had a unique relationship with Porsche, having grown up with a similarly passionate father.

Before this 911, he owned a 1979 SC Targa that belonged to none other than Jane Birkin, who had received it as a parting gift from longtime lover and French legend Serge Gainsbourg, before it moved on to singer Yves Simon. In a garage that feels like a testament to his love for French cultural icons and to his many interests in automobiles, it’s hard to imagine a more perfect fit.

On a sun-drenched spring day, we met Edouard on home soil in Boulogne-Billancourt. We trusted his instincts, as well as the car, to show us the best buildings in the neighbourhood, a dense urban area particularly well known by architecture aficionados as an Art Deco time capsule, with individual homes and artist studios by the likes of Robert Mallet-Stevens and Pierre Patout dotted along its luscious tree-lined streets. The city is also known for hosting the Musée des Années Trente - a holder of many other Art Deco treasures - as well as neoclassical follies, like the Emilio Terry townhouse or an abandoned Rothschild estate and castle.

Each item here points to an evidently curious mind that remains fascinated by the heydays of racing, but also of art, design, and fashion.

The “streamline” style building we set as our destination for the day is, quite uncannily, both a Le Corbusier and a Georges-Henri Pingusson building. Both highly notable architects, though the former has since gained an undeniable advantage in fame. Le Corbusier had originally built it as a minimalist two-storey family home here in the late twenties. Pingusson, while keeping its quite incongruous, sharply angular base, topped it off about ten years later with softer and more rounded upper levels.

The architect’s recognisable style especially shines in the simple bay-window and porthole details, both elements reminiscent of his most well-known project, the similarly streamline-styled Latitude 43 that has stood in the bay of Saint-Tropez since 1932. Prized with this exceptional architectural pedigree, the Boulogne-Billancourt building, with its black-and-white contrast typical of the early modernist movement, proved the perfect background for Edouard’s matching black Carrera, as well as for a discussion that inevitably merged the histories of architecture and automobiles; both the building and the car feel shockingly closely aligned in philosophy, despite having been conceived more than 6 decades apart from one another. Echoing the words and theories of Georges-Henri Pingusson, they both still feel fully modern and are used daily, flawlessly crafting a work of simultaneous poetry and ingenuity.