Côte d’Azur – a resting machine. There is no one. Silence. All you can hear is the sound of waves and the singing of birds. It is E-1027: Eileen Gray’s villa. E-1027 is not a machine for living. E-1027 is love and hate, beauty and devastation. I turn on the silence machine. I can’t see, can’t hear the beach frolic, the bathers, the hotels. I don’t look around. I look ahead. Sky, waves, pebbles, beach. The sound of the sea, birds singing, children shrieking. Idyllic. The machine is in motion. In the distant sky, a human transport machine approaches the runway in Nice. They’ll be here any minute now. The wave swells.