The house that Aalto built, for sale in Paris

Alvar Aalto's famous Maison Carré, one of the most important post-war houses in France is up for sale. Natasha Edwards was granted a rare look around

It's a cult building, one of the most important post-war houses built in France – if not the world – and few people have seen it. Now the Maison Carré, built 1956-59 by Alvar Aalto for the lawyer and gallery owner Louis Carré, has been put up for sale by the inheritors of the estate of Madame Olga Carré.

This is a unique chance to acquire what Jean-Louis Cohen, director of the soon-to-be-opened national centre of architecture and heritage (the Cité de l'Architecture et du Patrimoine) in Paris describes as "a very, very important building."

Aalto (1898-1976), father of modern Finnish architecture, is a cult figure among architects and fans of modern design, but few people know he designed anything in France. Most of his buildings, including the celebrated Paimio Sanitorium are in Finland (with a handful of others in Sweden, Russia, Germany and the United States).

A typical Aalto "total design", conceived with all its furniture and gardens, the Maison Carré sits on the edge of the small village of Bazoches-sur-Guyonne, in one of the best-preserved corners of the Ile-de-France. A personal interpretation of modernism, it shows an almost proto-ecological respect for nature and for raw materials.

The main structure, in white-painted brick, with lower courses of pale travertine (from the same quarry as the stone in Chartres cathedral), and a long, sloping roof in dark slate are combined with abundant use of natural wood. At the top of a wooded hill in four hectares of grounds, it feels like you're in the countryside, although Paris is only 35 miles away. Aalto's concern for integrating architecture with the landscape, extended to the garden, where broad grass steps, edged in stone, lead to a swimming pool.

The Maison Carré was the result of the meeting at the 1956 Venice Biennale between the architect and Carré, who was one of the most important, and wealthiest, art dealers of Forties and Fifties Paris. Carré, who had previously lived in a Paris apartment designed by Le Corbusier, gave Aalto carte blanche to design a house that would combine a home for himself and his third wife Olga, with a gallery and space to entertain. Here Carré displayed a personal collection which included paintings by Léger, Dufy and Klee, and hosted parties for some of the era's leading artists, including Marcel Duchamp, Joan Miró and Alexander Calder.

Although the Carrés employed a staff of 15, including three cooks and two chauffeurs, Carré wanted something resolutely modern. The result is a comfortable, liveable family house, with none of the impracticalities of a vast château.

"I asked him for a house which would be small outside and large inside," Carré said a decade before his death in 1977. "Above all I wanted nothing sumptuous. Aalto, his wife Elissa and me, we put enormous effort into keeping things simple." Aalto designed every detail right down to the doorhandles, the wardrobes, bathroom mirrors, and the lamppost on the drive.

Mr Cohen says: "It is a unique house both for its position in the French landscape and because it's Aalto. He did not build many large houses, perhaps two or three. One is the Villa Mairea in Noormarkku, Finland, which can be compared to Lloyd Wright's Falling Water and Le Corbusier's Villa Savoye. The Maison Carré belongs in the same category. It is important for the relationship between interior and exterior, the central hallway, its spatial qualities and craftsmanship."

Unlike many people's idea of avant-garde architecture, this house is anything but cold. From the outside, it presents a long, wedge-like form following the line of the hill, single-storey at the bottom rising to two storeys at the top. From behind, a series of protruding partitions creates a sequence of individual sun terraces for the bedrooms.

As you enter, you appreciate the attention to detail, the louvred wood above the entrance, through which the light shines in during the day and glows out by night, a metal lantern, the wooden detailing around a drainpipe. But Aalto's masterstroke is inside. The hallway-cum-gallery ceiling is an undulating boat-like form in fine slats of reddish Finnish pine. It rises in an arc above the entrance and swoops over the full-width, polished wood stairs into the salon, in striking independence of the exterior structure.

For all its apparent compact design, with the principal rooms opening off the hallway, this is a spacious residence; the living room is a massive 62.50sq metres and the dining room 33sq metres. The salon is large and convivial. An open fireplace is cut out from the inside corner wall like a Cubist sculpture; a long window seat conceals radiators. The library is a lovely cocoon for working in, with a terrific view of the landscape beyond. A wooden desk runs the length of the window, surrounded by bookshelves.

Slatted doorways lead to the private parts of the house. The main bedroom is almost square and off it are a bathroom with grey-tiled walk-in bath and – Scandinavia oblige – a sauna. In the second bedroom, a clever, full-height mirror swivels to reveal a walk-in wardrobe.

Beyond the bedrooms, a pantry leads to a large kitchen (curiously, while the house is remarkably timeless, this is the room that appears most set in the Fifties), and a staircase lit by a small, circular lightwell leads up to five staff bedrooms.

The ingenious manipulation of light, natural and artificial, is a recurring theme. Overhead natural light entering the dining room along one side, is combined with spotlights on rails that light pictures and table, and elsewhere pendant lamps are hung low, almost like mobiles.

But that's enough architectural detail, what's the bottom line? The asking price is €3.2m (£2.1m) plus €87,000 commission, with an option of €380,000 on the furniture. The valuation, reached with the help of the French solicitors' official body, the Chambre de Notaires,was particularly difficult given that so few comparable properties ever come on the market. The price is similar to that of a small turn-of-the-century château in the region, but the Maison Carré is a great deal rarer. As a result, it will also probably appeal only to what Pol Collignon, the notaire responsible for the sale, calls a "micro-market". In the end the asking price was partly dictated by how much the heirs – the five nephews of Carré's widow – would be required to pay in death duties. (The art collection was auctioned in December for €20.8m.)

The house, listed in 1996, has been visited by several possible buyers, some of them foreign. While many people would like to see the house turned into a museum or foundation, it is not clear who would do so and how many visitors it would attract.

There are rumours of interest from the French and Finnish ministries of culture. Marku Lahti, director of the Alvar Aalto Foundation in Helsinki, who has visited the house said the foundation is interested but "we don't have so much money", and action would depend on technical reports on the state of the roof and renovation work needed.

In the end, it seems that since the Maison Carré has never been open to the public and has remained in continuous private ownership, it will stay that way. And, after the sale, this architectural masterpiece will again be hidden behind closed doors.

For sales enquiries about the Maison Carré, contact Maîtres Claude Destame et Pol Collignon, Notaires, 3 avenue du Général de Gaulle, BP 33, 78490 Montfort-L'Amaury, France. Tel: 00 33-1 34 86 14 13.