Villa Jacquemet
The second house in a three-villa sequence that Jeanneret built on a single lane: same steep roof, same pine-forest ornament, same hillside address — and a year’s worth of growing confidence in the detail.
At a glance
Villa Jacquemet stands at Chemin de Pouillerel 8, a few steps from the Villa Fallet that preceded it. Designed around 1907 by Charles-Édouard Jeanneret and René Chapallaz, it is the second villa of the “Pouillerel trilogy” — three houses built in quick succession on the same wooded lane above La Chaux-de-Fonds, each in the Style Sapin that Jeanneret’s teacher Charles L’Eplattenier had defined as the regional form of Art Nouveau. The villa remains a private residence and is listed among the Le Corbusier sites of national significance in Switzerland.
Key facts
- Designer: Charles-Édouard Jeanneret (later Le Corbusier) and René Chapallaz
- Style: Style Sapin (Jura Art Nouveau), ornamental programme directed by Charles L’Eplattenier
- Year: 1907–1908 (second of the Pouillerel trilogy, after Villa Fallet 1906)
- Address: 8 Chemin de Pouillerel, 2300 La Chaux-de-Fonds
- GPS: 47.1050° N, 6.8157° E — Google Maps
- Heritage: The city of La Chaux-de-Fonds is a UNESCO World Heritage site for watchmaking town planning (2009); the Pouillerel villas are listed on the Swiss Federal Inventory of Heritage Sites
History
The commission for Villa Jacquemet followed quickly on the success of Villa Fallet, the first house Jeanneret designed in 1906. L’Eplattenier’s school was producing a coherent style — what he called the Style Sapin — and local clients were beginning to commission it. Villa Jacquemet and its neighbour Villa Stotzer (1908–09) consolidated the formula that Fallet had established: a steep Jura roof to shed the winter snowload, rendered walls carrying incised and modelled ornament drawn from the fir forest, and an interior hierarchy that aligned with the ornamental programme of the façade.
As a group, the three Pouillerel villas represent the only built evidence of the Style Sapin’s first phase. By 1912, when Jeanneret built the Maison Blanche on the same street, he had already moved decisively toward a proto-modern aesthetic influenced by his work in Paris and Berlin. The Pouillerel trilogy thus marks a specific moment: Art Nouveau entering Switzerland through a forest idiom, at the hands of an architect who would later disown everything it stood for.
Villa Jacquemet is located in a UNESCO World Heritage city (La Chaux-de-Fonds / Le Locle, watchmaking town planning, 2009).
What you see
The façade repeats the grammar of Villa Fallet — steep pitched roof, rendered wall surfaces, Jura-flora ornament — but the proportions of the openings and the distribution of the incised patterns show a slightly different hand. Where Fallet front-loads the decoration onto the main elevation, Jacquemet distributes it more evenly across the façade surface. The ironwork at the balcony railing continues the pine-motif repertoire established at its neighbour.
Seen from the lane, all three Pouillerel villas read as a composed sequence: similar scale, similar material palette, similar roofline, but with enough individual character that each reads as a distinct commission rather than a repetition.
Practical information
- Villa Jacquemet is a private residence; the exterior on Chemin de Pouillerel is freely visible.
- The three Pouillerel villas (Fallet no.1, Stotzer no.6, Jacquemet no.8) are walkable from each other in under five minutes.
- Maison Blanche (no.12) is a few minutes further up the lane and is open to visitors on a ticketed basis.
- Best visited in morning light, when the façade faces the sun.
Getting there
From La Chaux-de-Fonds central station, Chemin de Pouillerel is reached by a twenty-minute walk south through the grid city plan. Local buses serve the Pouillerel stop. The villas are clustered between numbers 1 and 12 on the same lane.
Nearby
- Villa Fallet (1906) — Chemin de Pouillerel 1, the first villa of the trilogy.
- Villa Stotzer (1908–09) — Chemin de Pouillerel 6, the third villa.
- Maison Blanche (Villa Jeanneret-Perret) (1912) — Chemin de Pouillerel 12, open to visitors.
Sources
- Wikipedia EN, “Villa Fallet” (the success of Villa Fallet leading to Jacquemet and Stotzer commissions).
- Wikipedia EN, “Le Corbusier” (the three Pouillerel villas as a group; Chapallaz collaboration).
- OSM Nominatim geocoder: “Villa Jaquemet” at Chemin de Pouillerel 8 (GPS confirmed 47.1050, 6.8157).
- Swiss Federal Inventory of Cultural Heritage Sites, canton Neuchâtel (Pouillerel villas included).
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