This week, @TheOnlyAaron and myself dive into the crown jewel of 20th-century modernism: Villa Savoye. While this architectural masterpiece has been studied for decades, seeing it built from scratch in real-time offers a whole new perspective. Come for the expert SketchUp tips, stay for the banter, and see if Aaron can do justice to this architectural classic. Grab a beverage of your choice (lotssss of coffee for us 
) and join the fun!
2026-03-27T18:00:00Z
We’d love your help finding some interesting details, plans or anything else that might be helpful!
I’ve compiled a few images below. It also seems that this design has been modeled fairly comprehensively on 3DWH, not that it’s a competition, but Aaron has some stiff competition!
Where is this building in Real Life?
Wondering because I’m guessing it’s NOT in Earthquake country as it’s difficult to engineer apparently heavy overhangs with only columns that don’t appear to have any shear strength!
It’s an outside of Paris and is almost 100 years old
OK. NOT Earthquake country -as least as far as I know!
No, I think the biggest natural challenge it has to contend with is the rain on the flat roof
Tell me the name of the 3D application that has NOT been used to model this (and the Barcelona Pavilion)!
I have nothing to contribute for Villa Savoye but in homage to Le Corbusier maybe you could use the Modulor Man…
ModulorMan.skp (176.8 KB)
I slept on the LC lounge chair at the first floor : ) and I know the heritage architect who solved the roof problem at the origin of a possible lawsuit with the Savoye
This house is one of the most iconic pieces of architecture of the 20th century, it was the epitome of the five architectural concepts developed by Le Corbusier.
Im not an engineer, I’m architect but I live in a seismic country, imo this could be built on a seismic country, the difference would be on the dimensions of the columns, beams and foundation, anyways it’s known that the villa savoye had some issues even when it was new specially with water filtration, it was ahead of its time, nowadays we have better materials and more advanced technology to avoid those problems but for the owners it was a headache for years.
My son who is in elementary school is learning an online cad software, it’s called selfCad, I helped him to model an small and basic lamp and it took us hours to do it, I can’t imagine how could someone model an entire house using that software.
Probably inhuman perseverance. The oldest models of Villa Savoye I remember were done with AutoCad, version 2.5 (or older, I don’t remember when AutoCad acquired the z-coordinate), in the late 1980s. With the then interface, the task was almost inhuman. I did my first 3D presentations a bit later, in the early 1990s.
That’s awesome! Thanks for sharing. If only we could see those early 3D presentations…
Is Aaron doing modelling the inside as well? I hope so as some of the internal features are very interseting to see how Aaron will go about them.
Given the short timeline, I’d imagine that Aaron will put all of his time into the exterior, but we might touch on some of the interior stuff! I’ll be sure to try to peer pressure him on stream (I invite you to do the same!)
That was a fun stream. Thank you all for tuning in and keeping us honest!
Aaron’s final model: 3D Warehouse
Is this modeling session recorded for replay?
