4 unités LC - Architecture Insights

Introduction
Singular / Plural
The Unité d’habitation of Le Corbusier in Marseille is the most
renowned post-war housing development in the world. Any book
regarding Modern architecture or the history of housing and urban
design would never fail to mention this project. But although so
much has been written and re-written about this particular building
over the years, the existence of three other such ‘Unité
d’habitation’ buildings in France is consistently skimmed over, or
even completely overlooked 1 – an odd occurrence seeing as the
multiple construction of these blocks was one of the main
principles of their design concept. 2
In response to these two issues, this thesis draws together all four
‘Unités’ in France and addresses them with equal importance. The
‘Unité d’habitation’ of Marseille was indeed the prototype for all
other subsequently constructed ‘Unités’, it was the first and the
original ‘Unité d’habitation’, but that is not to say that its history is
any richer than any of the others. Each ‘Unité’ was constructed
under its own unique circumstances, in towns of highly varied
origins and locations around France. The four ‘Unités’ have
experienced their own histories and stories, of which the
documentation has proved to provide interesting points of contrast
and correlation.
Past / Present
Varied accounts of the ‘Unité’ (again, mainly of Marseille, as the
presence of the others is consistently overlooked) may be found
over the years. Robert Hughes, for example, would have us believe
that the building once found itself in a depressing and desolate
state, full of pathos for the grand and ‘radiant’ vision it fell so
evidently short of –
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“Today the pool [on the roof] is cracked, the gymnasium closed
(some optimist tried to resurrect it as a disco, which naturally
failed), and the [running] track littered with broken concrete and
tangles of rusty scaffolding. …In the raking light of an early
Mediterranean morning, it has a heroic sadness…” 3 (published
1980)
William J R Curtis, however, paints a much more romantic picture of
the ‘Unité’ as place offering its residents an appealingly idle
Mediterranean lifestyle –
“It is interesting to visit the Unité …in the evening in the
autumn… People flood in from work and school, leaving their
cars under the trees; they dawdle by the banks of cypresses, or
play tennis, or shop in the upper street. On the roof terrace old
men chat, catching the last afternoon sun while their
grandchildren splash in the pool… The Unité takes a patiently
worked out urban theorem and renders it in the terminology of a
Mediterranean dream.” 4 (published 1986)
So what is the current state of the ‘Unité d’habitation’, not only in
Marseille, but equally of the other three in France? How have their
lives developed over the years, and what changes have they and
the towns in which they are sited undergone? For it is now nearly
half a century since their construction, and not only are there
variations to be noted between each ‘Unité’, but equally with in
their own past and present.
For as Le Corbusier said in his Poème de l’angle droit, “To make
architecture is to make a creature,” 5 as architecture too has a life.
Once it is brought into existence, it changes and evolves, as does
the environment surrounding it. Architecture is in a continual state
of transition and flux. It can only be considered ‘finished’ when it
no longer exists.