4 unités LC - Architecture Insights

Le Corbusier attributed certain features of ‘Immeubles-Villas’ to the
Chartreuse d’Ema in Tuscany, which he had first visited back in
1907 as a student. 27 The monastic lifestyle of the charterhouse had
held a lasting effect on him, introducing him to the virtues of
collective living.
But it was not just the concept of a ‘collective life’ that had
inspired Le Corbusier during this visit, it was also the organisation
and separation of two very different aspects of daily life – one side
private, reflective and self contained, and the other side communal
and social. In the Chartreuse d’Ema, the collective spaces were
organised and separated from the private living spaces of the
monks. The individual rooms were secluded and totally isolated
from each other, each being equipped with their own garden space
and a view out to hills 28 – the idea that was adapted to the
‘Immeubles-Villas’ (and utilised later, in the ‘Unités d’habitation’):
“The ‘Immeubles-Villas’ proposes a formula for a brand new
lifestyle in the big city. Each apartment is, in actual fact, a small
house with a garden, situated at any height above the road level.
But the road itself is modified; it is set away from the houses, trees
overrun the city…” 29
But it was not just the collective monastic lifestyle that had
inspired Le Corbusier’s design of mass-houisng blocks. For also
during the 1920’s, when the ‘Immeuble-Villas’ came about, the idea
of the ‘communal-house’ was being widely explored throughout
Russia and Germany, where working-class housing was considered
very much a public matter 30 (a situation that would only arise in
France after the war). The combining of private and collective lives
was simply a pragmatic approach for the architects of the Russian
Avant-Garde movement, tackling the problem of housing shortage
experienced in Russia following the revolution. These socialist
Soviet solutions evidently impressed Le Corbusier, who later
employed some of their ideas to his own designs. 31
35 36
A housing shortage was equally being experienced in the industrial
cities of Germany, where architects of the Bauhaus such as Walter
Gropius and Bruno Taut were promoting the ideas similar to the
soviet ‘social condensers’. The housing blocks they proposed
promoted a minimisation of services and thus of energy
consumption through localised collective use. Economy and
expediency in the construction of the buildings was equally
considered, with the integration of industry and factory produced
elements in buildings. 32
These industrised methods of construction were similarly
suggested by Le Corbusier for the ‘Immeubles-Villas’, where it was
proposed that the standardised building elements be prefabricated
in a factory then transported to and assembled on site. 33 Such
techniques were experimented in some of Le Corbusier’s
constructed housing projects, thanks to private developers with
faith in his ideas. These projects were the ‘Quartier Moderne
Frugès’ (1925-28) 34 , ‘Pavillon Suisse’ (1930-32) 35 and ‘Immeuble
Clarté’ (1930-32) 36 – each of which display certain elements that
were later brought together in one design of the ‘Unité
d’habitation’. 37