In recent years, however, the English and American idea of comfort has permeated French ideas, particularly in the planning of apartment houses, in the design of which French architects have reached a high standard of attainment. The plans of the latest apartment buildings are remarkable for the easy and skil ful arrangement of their rooms, for the clever utilization of often awkward sites and for the excellence of their services and sani tary conveniences. The entrance vestibule from the street and the main staircase are as a rule handsomely proportioned and excel lent in the detail of their stucco and ironwork, and in the apart ments themselves halls, corridors and cupboard spaces are usually on a generous scale.
The exterior of the typical modern apartment house shows a development from the i8th century or Louis XIII. type of front, of stone, or brick and stone, simple in general lines, crowned with a cornice and slated mansard roof, and relieved by carving and the excellent ironwork of the balconies. The latest tendency is, however, away from this classic type. Flat bay windows often continue up the whole height of the facade, and the roof line is broken up by receding planes with balconies and elaborate dor mer windows. French building stone is soft enough to encourage carving, and the modern French apartment house has generally exhibited an abundance of carved enrichment, though the most recent tendency is toward a return to simplicity of treatment. The best examples occur in Paris, where there are many fine new apartment buildings erected in the quarter of the Etoile, Passy, Champ de Mars and Montparnasse. Some of the most stimulat ing examples are by the architect Henri Sauvage. German and Austrian influences have had their effect on these designs, which have in turn reflected the Art Nouveau and the sterner modern movement ; but a certain lightness of handling in mass and detail has always remained in evidence.
The town house or hotel particulier is tending to-day towards a modern character which rejects traditional forms. Large win dows, plain surfaces and a general rigidity of form are in evi dence, and a group of young architects, headed by such men as Le Corbusier, Mallet Stevens and Andre Lurcat, is erecting town houses in Paris and elsewhere which have little affinity with French tradition.
In respect of villas and country houses the same tendency is noticeable. At first inspired by local types, such as the tile roofed and half timbered houses of Normandy, the Provencal farms with their stone walls and flat tiled roofs, or the gabled and turreted buildings of the château country of Touraine, the French villa was a not always agreeable modern replica of a fine proto type. The modern movement has spread to a small extent to the
villa and country residence, particularly in the south, where it is exemplified in the cubist houses of such designers as Djo-Bour geois, which with their white walls, rectangular forms and flat roofs, recall the architecture of Tunis and Algiers.
French domestic architecture has undoubtedly been largely in fluenced by the academic training of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts : to its tradition in formal planning and design in the grand man ner it owes its best feature, spacious and easy planning, and also its worst characteristics, which are an undue emphasis of archi tectural features, often unwise sacrifices to the principle of formal planning, and the retention in small work of architectural elements and embellishments which are more appropriate to a monumental building than to one of domestic character.