Le Corbusier’s architecture is one of the most influential within the design industry; his most influential piece of architecture is Unité d’Habitation, completed in 1952. Because of its design, it has been responsible for the construction of thousand concrete apartment blocks around the world, one being in Sheffield, Park Hill. In this post I am going to talk about Le Corbusier and the construction of Unité d’Habitation, as well as comparing it to Park Hill.
Le Corbusier wanted to design a space for the people who were relocated during the Second World War to rehouse, this is when he began to think about designing Unité d’Habitation, it would give people a spacious home where they could begin to re start their lives. With Unité d’Habitation, Le Corbusier’s aim was to…
provide with silence and solitude before the sun, space and greenery, a dwelling which will be the perfect receptacle for the family
and to,
set up, in God’s good nature, under the sky and in the sun, a magisterial work of architecture, the product of rigour, grandeur, nobility, happiness and elegance.
Instead of going with the usual smooth white surfaces which many of his buildings had, he decided to design the Unité with concrete, with the texture coming from the wooden planks which were providing the frame, it allowed for the use of steel to be ignored causing the building to become less expensive. Many have described this building as ‘the first manifestation of an environment suited to modern life’, Le Corbusier expressed that this building was ‘made for men’ and is ‘made to the human scale’.
Unité d’Habitation is situated in a large park area, having a length of 165meters and a height of 56meters, it rises above the surrounding treetops, it consisted of two elevations, these having balconies and deep-set windows, as well as many other designs of Le Corbusier this particular architecture was based around the ‘Modular man’, as mentioned in ‘What is form?’ this allowed for the proportions to be accurate and he also used the golden section.
WHAT IS THE GOLDEN SECTION?
The Golden ratio is a special number found by dividing a line into two parts so that the longer part divided by the smaller part is also equal to the whole length divided by the longer part.
http://www.livescience.com/37704-phi-golden-ratio.html– ACCESSED 22ND OCT 2015
Inside this architecture, narrow flats, which were two-story duplexes, having a double-height living area at the one end, filled up the block. Each apartment was approximately 21 meters of the block, this causes for each living space to interlock around a central corridor, and there was only a corridor on every third floor because of the structure, which Le Corbusier designed. When Unité d’Habitation first opened up, the top two floors, seven and eight, consisted of shops, galleries, hostels and cafes, however these have now been taken over by a hotel and more businesses such as medical centers to architects. The roof of the Unité d’Habitation was designed to create a community feel, this was done by having a nursery, swimming pool and a running track.
“The Unité d’Habitation is an incredibly powerful sculpture, and the feeling of living inside a work of art is a daily reality,”
said Jean-Marc Drut, who occupies apartment number 50.
COMPARISON TO PARK HILL
Park Hill is located in Sheffield, it is known as a iconic piece of architecture and is the larges listed structure in Europe, it is allocated on one of Sheffield’s seven hills, right next to the railway and city center, its character creates a piece of art work from the inside and out. It consists of one and two bed apartments with views of Sheffield.
Similar to Unité d’Habitation, Park Hill consists of colour panels with a modular structure. The design was influenced by Le Corbusier’s work, especially Unité d’Habitation, you can see the similarity in the layout of windows, and balconies as well as the use of concrete walls. Both Unité d’Habitation and Park Hill incorporated the concrete surfaces with the colourful panels, Le Corbusier as I mentioned before believed that concrete was more than just a material, he wanted to explore urban life, similar to the design of Park Hill, they were both designed for unity of the community and for people to relocate to. Park Hill has less right angles within its structure compared to Unité, this is because of the fact Park Hill was built on a hill, which was uneven.
Park Hill is very often compared to the design of Unité because of the aesthetics and relation to society being so similar, even though they may look very alike, they both have the idea of ‘streets in the sky’.
COMPARISON
Peta-Louise Krog 
Love this case study. Very interesting and has a lot of information which I was un aware of.
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