Le Corbuser's Tall Building Unité d’Habitation, Marseilles (1945-52) A844 Open Studio Set Exercise
Friday, 12 Oct 2018, 10:00
Visible to anyone in the world
Edited by Steve Bamlett, Friday, 12 Oct 2018, 10:14
Updated: Friday, 12 Oct 2018, 09:58
Photograph: Roof level pool and children's play areas at Unité d’Habitation, Marseilles (1945-52) from Jenkins, D. (1999) ‘Le Corbusier: Unité d’Habitation, Marseilles (1945-52)’ in Dunlop, H. & Hector D. Twentieth –Century Classics 3 London, Phaidon, photo by David Cook.
I chose this photograph to show that tall buildings are in fact relative. Their position on the roof is less important to the children herein than the objects turned to their playful use. Their horizon is at one with their surroundings and its heights are contiguous with theirs and in a sense visually 'reduced' to forms that are mirrored in the roof areas' interesting forms in concrete. We know such mirroring was intended by Le Corbusier. Iain Sinclair (2018:87 'Living With Buildings and Walking with Ghosts') talks about his intention to visit the block for the "experience" of 'that "magnificent" Le Corbusier roof, a measured progress around the panorama of the city, its mountains, money-stadium and shore at sunset.'
The point is that we tend to see tall buildings and their summits as places from which to look down but here it serves an almost egalitarian practice in relation to both nature and society - persons, even little persons, become one with their high position. Le Corbusier's roof is not a site of a fabulous penthouse, like those in other private skyscrapers, but of family life across the bases of the social spectrum. Here however is the scary vista looking down.
Given Le Corbusier's flirtation with Vichy government, I feel uncertain about this historically but not in terms of social planning that still contained an aesthetic. In Beazley's World Atlas of Architecture, this building (p. 381) is given as an example of 'Brutalist Europe' but the text is more nuanced. European architects, Beazley argues, sought a different aesthetic and indeed a different social philosophy to animate their buildings. Towers of glass suited capitalism but not a social democratic vision.
Brutalist?
Axonmetric
Jenkins (1999) describes it as the acme of Le Corbusier's work, based on 'experimental work with housing prototypes in the 1920s' and more contemporary, 'investigations into collective housing forms.'. According to Sinclair (2018), when subjected to fire in one of its duplex 'houses' (not flats), it was badly damaged in a small part but no-one died and the community lived on restored. The story of Grenfell Tower needs here comparing in terms of governmental neglect and disdain for public housing that contributed heavily to that latter tragedy. I'll slip a fe pictures in a blog to show the downside of Le Corbusier's project looked at from below, including an axonometric drawing (I only know about this from the A844 preparatory reading.
Le Corbuser's Tall Building Unité d’Habitation, Marseilles (1945-52) A844 Open Studio Set Exercise
Updated: Friday, 12 Oct 2018, 09:58
Photograph: Roof level pool and children's play areas at Unité d’Habitation, Marseilles (1945-52) from Jenkins, D. (1999) ‘Le Corbusier: Unité d’Habitation, Marseilles (1945-52)’ in Dunlop, H. & Hector D. Twentieth –Century Classics 3 London, Phaidon, photo by David Cook.
I chose this photograph to show that tall buildings are in fact relative. Their position on the roof is less important to the children herein than the objects turned to their playful use. Their horizon is at one with their surroundings and its heights are contiguous with theirs and in a sense visually 'reduced' to forms that are mirrored in the roof areas' interesting forms in concrete. We know such mirroring was intended by Le Corbusier. Iain Sinclair (2018:87 'Living With Buildings and Walking with Ghosts') talks about his intention to visit the block for the "experience" of 'that "magnificent" Le Corbusier roof, a measured progress around the panorama of the city, its mountains, money-stadium and shore at sunset.'
The point is that we tend to see tall buildings and their summits as places from which to look down but here it serves an almost egalitarian practice in relation to both nature and society - persons, even little persons, become one with their high position. Le Corbusier's roof is not a site of a fabulous penthouse, like those in other private skyscrapers, but of family life across the bases of the social spectrum. Here however is the scary vista looking down.
Given Le Corbusier's flirtation with Vichy government, I feel uncertain about this historically but not in terms of social planning that still contained an aesthetic. In Beazley's World Atlas of Architecture, this building (p. 381) is given as an example of 'Brutalist Europe' but the text is more nuanced. European architects, Beazley argues, sought a different aesthetic and indeed a different social philosophy to animate their buildings. Towers of glass suited capitalism but not a social democratic vision.
Brutalist?
Axonmetric
Jenkins (1999) describes it as the acme of Le Corbusier's work, based on 'experimental work with housing prototypes in the 1920s' and more contemporary, 'investigations into collective housing forms.'. According to Sinclair (2018), when subjected to fire in one of its duplex 'houses' (not flats), it was badly damaged in a small part but no-one died and the community lived on restored. The story of Grenfell Tower needs here comparing in terms of governmental neglect and disdain for public housing that contributed heavily to that latter tragedy. I'll slip a fe pictures in a blog to show the downside of Le Corbusier's project looked at from below, including an axonometric drawing (I only know about this from the A844 preparatory reading.
All the best
Steve