Unité d'Habitation
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The Unité d'Habitation (French, literally, "Housing Union" or "Housing Unit" since Unité has a double meaning in French) is the name of a modernist residential housing design principle developed by Le Corbusier, which formed the basis of numerous housing developments designed by him throughout Europe with this name. The first and most famous of these buildings, also known as Cité radieuse and, informally, as La Maison du Fada (French - Provençal, "The Lunatic's House"), is located in Marseille, France, built 1947-1952. Probably his most famous work, it proved enormously influential and is often cited as the initial inspiration of the Brutalist architectural style and philosophy.
The Marseille building comprises 337 apartments arranged over twelve stories, all suspended on large piloti. The building also incorporates shops, sporting, medical and educational facilities, and a hotel. The flat roof is designed as a communal terrace with sculptural ventilation stacks and a swimming pool.
Inside, corridors run through the centre of the long axis of every third floor of the building, with each apartment lying on two levels, and stretching from one side of the building to the other, with a balcony. In the block's planning, the architect drew on his studies of early Soviet Communal houses such as the Narkomfin Building. Appropriately, unlike many of the inferior system-built blocks it inspired, which lack the original's generous proportions, communal facilities and parkland setting, the Unité is popular with its residents and is now mainly occupied by middle-class professionals.
The building is constructed in béton brut (rough-cast concrete), as the hoped-for steel frame proved too expensive in light of post-War shortages. The replacement material influenced the Brutalist movement, and the building inspired several housing complexes including the Alton West estate in Roehampton, London and Park Hill in Sheffield. These buildings have attracted a great deal of criticism. Other, more successful, manifestations of the Unité include Chamberlin, Powell & Bon's Barbican Estate (completed 1982) and Ernő Goldfinger's Trellick Tower (1972), both in London.
Le Corbusier's utopian city living design was repeated in several more buildings with this name and a very similar design. Other Unités were built in Nantes, Briey, and Firminy, as well as in Berlin.
[edit] External links
- La "Cité Radieuse" à Marseille (French) (contains many pictures)
- Map of the Unité
- Unité d'Habitation (German) (contains many links)
- corbusierhaus.com (German) (gives you the opportunity to live in Berlin's Unité d'Habitation)
