Le Corbusier's Unité d'habitation in Marseille combines apartments, shared facilities, and rooftop activity areas. Its design sought to make the building support community life.
The building's exposed concrete and strong massing gave it a distinctive appearance. It became an important example in modern architectural discussions of collective housing and spatial organization.
History
In 1920, Le Corbusier started to develop the Unité d'habitation type, which became influential in 20th century modernism and contemporary residential design in Europe. The first realizations were built in Paris and Marseille in the 1940s as high-rise concrete structures. During the construction of the Marseille building, a few model apartments were built and furnished for visitors as an exhibition.
In the 1980s, a team from ETH Zurich surveyed several apartments in Marseille and built several full-scale models for exhibitions in Paris, Karlsruhe, Tokyo and New York. In 1986, a full-scale model was constructed at the Badischer Kunstverein by Gernot Bayne based on the survey of Ruggero Tropeano. The same model was then on display at Centre Pompidou. A full scale original kitchen, stairs, and other parts of the apartments are stored and displayed in several museum collections around the world. The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York acquired a complete kitchen in 2013. In 2007, students built a structurally correct full-scale model inside the museum "Cité de l'Architecture et du Patrimoine" in Paris. Unité d'habitation model apartments have been rebuilt in exhibitions or renovated in their historic style.
La Cité Radieuse, Marseille
The first and most famous of the Unité d'habitation buildings is in Marseille, France, and was built between 1947 and 1952. One of Le Corbusier's most famous works, it proved enormously influential and is often cited as the initial inspiration for the Brutalist architectural style and philosophy.
The Marseille building, developed with Le Corbusier's designers Shadrach Woods and George Candilis, comprises 337 apartments of 23 different layouts across 12 storeys, and all supported by large pilotis. The building also incorporates shops including an architectural bookshop, a rooftop gallery, educational facilities, a hotel that is open to the public, and a restaurant, "Le Ventre de l'Architecte" ("The Belly of the Architect"). The building is constructed in béton brut (rough-cast concrete), as the hoped-for steel frame proved too expensive due to the post-war steel shortage.
Inside, wide corridors ("streets in the sky") run along the central long axis of every third floor of the building. Each apartment lies on two levels, such that the room on one side of a corridor belongs to the apartment that is mostly below the corridor floor, while that on the opposite side belongs to the apartment above. On those floors without corridors, the apartments stretch from one side of the building to the other, and each has a balcony on the western side.
The flat roof is designed as a communal terrace with sculptural ventilation stacks, a running track, and a shallow paddling pool for children. There is also a children's art school in the atelier. The roof, where a number of theatrical performances have taken place, was renovated in 2010 and 2022, and since 2013 it has hosted an exhibition center headed by designer Ora-Ïto called the MaMo. The roof has unobstructed views of the Mediterranean Sea and Marseille.
The building also became a gathering place for architects. In 1953, members of the International Congresses of Modern Architecture celebrated its opening on the roof. Visitors included Walter Gropius, a leading figure of the Bauhaus. Their interest shows how the Marseille project belonged to an international discussion about housing, modern design, and the shared spaces of everyday life.