When Domus published the pictures of newly-built Le Corbusier’s Unité d’Habitation

Just as it is difficult to imagine the childhood of great figures in history, to think of them intent on playing with their friends or complaining to their mother about homework to be done, we also find it complicated to accept that icons of art or architecture can have had a youth, a childhood: an initial moment when not everyone knew them, when – as much expected and anticipated as they could have been – they were just a new theater, a new bridge, a new apartment building, which people were beginning to study, comment on, photograph, each time with different interpretations. It also happened to the Unité d’Habitation that Le Corbusier built in Marseille between 1947 and 1952: today a symbol of a new vision of living for the postwar period – with its duplex apartments, the kitchens developed with Charlotte Perriand, the sculptural terrace – it manages to be an icon of different reflections, of brutalism as well as of organic architecture. By the time of its completion, however, there was great interest about knowing the details of what was the new work – much anticipated  even by Gio Ponti during its construction – of an authentic star-architect, by then living and in full swing: that was the moment when, in February 1953, Domus published and commented the new pictures of the building realized by Lucien Hervé, on issue 279.

The architecture in landscape The Unité is isolated in the landscape and dominates it, like a large ship in a harbor.. It makes one think back to the ancient convents – the first “unité d'habitation” – which chose isolated and beautiful locations, by nature and landscape; they did not line up along a road. The “neighborhood” of the Lecorbusierian unité, is the countryside and the sky. The vertical city that the Unité achieves really allows immediate and total contact with greenery, at the foot of the building (the horizontal city, the garden-city, instead, dilutes the green and corrupts it).

Monumental aspects of concrete at night Concrete is the substance of this architecture, as stone was for the pyramids, and here it becomes a monumental material, equalling the size of the building.This architecture is a concrete sculpture: it is correctly left bare, like bronze, marble, stone. Naked not only in the outer surfaces, but also in the inner surfaces of entryways, corridors, etc., this being not an architecture-involucre, an outer shell to an inner organism, but a unique block carved and sculpted out of a unique material, in the shapes required to be inhabited at the inside.
In the photographs: night view of the side of the building with the exterior spiral staircase, leading from the terrace to the ground; the entrance lobby with the concierge counter made of concrete, and the walkway on the facade with the car shelter roof.

Documentary of the interiors The inhabited interior. The architecture of the interiors predominates over the furniture, not disappearing behind it. These interiors are built with recessed installations. The more personal and private value that each family's objects take on, must be remarked here, as most of the furnishings are part of the masonry. In the photographs: the living room of one of the 337 duplex apartments (the Unité accommodates 1.600 people) with the demonstrative furnishings suggested by Le Corbusier; the cabinets planned in construction and the sanitary installations, in the central part of each apartment (bathroom for the parents, shower and washbasin in the children's room); the living room in the quarters of a ministry employee (top photo, p. 5); a duplex apartment seen from the terrace, and the terrace seen from the inside: the contact with the outside is very wide, through the total opening of the window in the facade.

On the upper terrace, formal imagination is set free Here is a landscape entirely made of architecture, a total concrete landscape. It has the suggestion of Gothic cathedrals in which the roof is not a covering, neither does it cover nor extinguish the architecture, but rather starts it over again by surprise, in an all-built and accessible marble setting. This terrace, in its grandeur – see above the concrete bulwark for outdoor theatrical performances – and in its labyrinthine mystery – see in the photo on the right the paths between the blind walls and the walled boxes of the open-air kindergarten – is has much to share with ancient oriental architecture, to its “architectures for astronomy”. In the photographs: the open space and the two backdrop-walls for outdoor theatrical performances; the arrival to the terrace through the stairs; the access to the showers and the solarium (small photo above); the outlet of the arrival path to the terrace reserved for children (small photo, facing page); the boxes for outdoor children’s play and kindergarten; and the arrival paths to the swimming pool and showers.  

Children invade the architecture The more massive, grand and deserted a building is, the more it lends itself to being invaded by children. They prefer the back of the elephant. In the photographs: the outdoor games of the children from the kindergarten, by their swimming pool; the Marseille landscape seen from above the terrace, by the showers and the solarium; the children’s free play area on the terrace, with the concrete mountain to climb and traverse.