The infamous Unite d' Habitation, the first in Le Corbusier's new line of housing projects that emphasized community living for all the residents, was completed in 1952. For its 70th anniversary, world-renowned photo artist Paul Clemence reveals a unique photo series of the building as it stands today. The photographs honor the construction that initiated the brutalist movement and showcase the infamous project's current condition.
Originally planned as a communal living project which would accommodate inhabitants to shop, play, live, and come together in a “vertical garden city”, Unite D’habition is one of Le Corbusier’s most important works. As the need for housing rose after World War II, this large-scale project was a ground-breaking idea with a new understanding of residential buildings.
The Unite d'Habitation was a first for Le Corbusier and for the methods used to design a complex large enough to house 1,600 residents. Known for his villas, the architect had no structures at the scale. The project is known for suggesting verticality instead of sprawl when housing so many residents. Moreover, the design also emphasized the idea of a neighborhood, a mixed-use commune that would shape the lives of these residents.
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Oscar Niemeyer's Itamaraty Palace Captured by Paul ClemenceThe design calls for an inventive method of spatial organization to fit the residential areas and the public social spaces because there are roughly 1,600 people spread across eighteen stories. It's interesting to note that most common elements are located on the roof rather than inside the structure. The rooftop is transformed into a garden terrace with a playground, a gym, a kindergarten, and a tiny pool.
Along with the roof, the interior of the building is divided up into stores, clinics, and even a small hotel. The Unite d'Habitation is essentially a "city within a city" designed with the resident's needs in mind from both a spatial and functional standpoint. The reinforced beton-brut concrete (rough-cast concrete), the least expensive in post-war Europe, is used to build the Unite d'Habitation. Moreover, this became a vital component of the Brutalist movement the building showcases. It might also be seen as a worldly attempt to capture the conditional nature of life after the war—rough, battered, and harsh.
Le Corbusier and Charlotte Perriand collaborated to design the interiors and the built-in furniture and mainly constructed storage walls with a variety of cupboards with sliding doors for the apartments. Perriand also worked on the design of the kitchens for the apartments; 321 of the 337 units had Atelier Le Corbusier type 1 kitchen, many of which are still in use today. The kitchen countertops and the steel staircases are made from aluminum. In addition to being rebuilt in exhibitions worldwide, the old Unité buildings' model apartment complexes have undergone renovations.
The popular design was repeated in four cities with an almost identical design. In fact, in 2018, architect Philipp Mohr led the renovation of an apartment in the iconic Unite d’Habitation in Berlin. The different implementations of the project attempt to make the ideas of Le Corbusier more accessible and a comprehensive archive of the movement he initiated.
