Unite D’Habitation

Unite D’Habitation by Le Corbusier was located on Boulevard Michelet, Marseille, France. It was the first large scale project he had ever taken part of as the housing became a necessity after World War II. Due to the bombings on France during the second World War, hundreds of families were left homeless. Le Corbusier was tasked with designing a multi-family residential building, and it would be the first of a series that focused on the ideas of community that would come together in a “vertical garden city”. When completed in 1952, the project would house nearly 1,600 residents. At the time, if one was to design for so many people they would stretch the building out but the site was located on a mixed use, modernist, residential high rise neighborhood. Le Corbusier places the communal areas of the project on the roof, these included places to shop and play. The finished roof was a large garden terrace that included a running track, a club, a kindergarten, a gym, and a shallow pool. The Unite d’Habitation was known to be a city within a city. The facade of the building was constructed out of a rough cast concrete because it was the cheapest material in post-war Europe. The building despite its exponentially larger size from Le Corbusier’s regular projects, includes Le Corbusier’s five points. The building is supported on large pilotis that allow for circulation and gardens under the building. The next point of Le Corbusier’s five is a roof garden. In Unite D’Habitation, Le Corbusier more than meets the requirements of a roof garden, he has his roof community. By adding a patio into the facade, the height of the building seems to be smaller but this was done intentionally to create the allusion to a ribbon window stretching across the whole building, this hits another one of Le Corbusier’s five points. Le Corbusier’s influences are apparent in this work as the Unite D’Habitation closely relates to a steamship that is very common in some of Le Corbusier’s work. The Ribbon windows on the roof of the building very closely resemble cabin windows. These windows overlook the shallow pool and the roof terrace very similar to a central cabins view on a boat. Even the residential rooms represent those of a steam ship. But unlike most residential apartments, Le Corbusier designed the units to be double heighted which lowered the amount of corridors to one every three floors. “By narrowing the units and allowing for a double height space, Corbusier is capable of efficiently placing more units in the building and creating an interlocking system of residential volumes. At each end of the unit there is a balcony protected by a brise-soleil that allows for cross ventilation throughout the unit flowing through the narrow bedrooms into the double height space; emphasizing an open volume rather than an open plan”. This proved to be beneficial as it allowed more units per floor and more units overall compared to general multi-family homes.

https://www.archdaily.com/85971/ad-classics-unite-d-habitation-le-corbusier

Le Corbusier: The Unite d'Habitation in Marseille, Le Corbusier