The (French literally "Housing Unity" or "Housing Unit") is the name of a modernist residential housing designed by Le Corbusier with the collaboration of painter-architect Nadir Afonso.The concept formed the basis of

designed by him throughout Europe with this name.

In the block's planning, the architect heavily drew on his study of the

.

Unité d'Habitation

several housing developments

Soviet Communal housing project, the Narkomfin Building

RESEARCH

AFTER

RESEARCH

Existing

Social

Condensers

Unité d'Habitation

RESEARCH

AFTER

RESEARCH

Existing

Social

Condensers

Cité Radieuse

Cité RadieuseLa Maison du Fada

Marseille, France

a social space in which the individual and the collective are equally balanced

enrich social life in the building

The first and most famous of these buildings, also known as (radiant city) and, informally, as (French - Provençal, "The Lunatic's House"), is located in

, built 1947-1952.

The idea to build the Cité Radieuse is the result of a research program that Le Corbusier oversaw for almost twenty-five years. The aim was to find a new architectural response to the problem of collective housing at a time when France was experiencing a severe housing shortage.

According to Le Corbusier, the Unité d’Habitation creates

. The central idea of the model remains simple: it’s to build on artificial grounds individual flats that are placed within the logic of a collective structure. The building itself stands on stilts. The way in which the Unité is organized and the integrated services it offers are meant to . By doing so, Le Corbusier invents a town object that transcends the ordinary functions of housing.

Main goals of the idea considering social aspect:?an attempt at radical renewal of the traditional block structure on a spatial and functional level?providing the perfect residence for a family, while facing the sun, the surrounding space and nature in silence and solitude.

Unité d'Habitation

RESEARCH

AFTER

RESEARCH

Existing

Social

Condensers

Cité Radieuse

nursery school, hotel with restaurant and bar, shops (including a laundry, bakery, butcher, pharmacy), real estate and commercial offices and gymnasium, open air theater and running track

each apartment lying on two levelsstretching from one side of the building to the other balcony

popular with its residents and is now mainly occupied by middle-class professionals.

Le Corbusier’s Unité d’Habitation are its 1,600 residents, 337 lodgings (of 23 different types) and a series of equipments or services such as a

. The Unité is 137 meters long, 24 meters wide and 56 meters high. It has 18 floors and a sun deck roof-terrace with a swimming pool and an unobstructed view of the Mediterranean.

Inside, corridors “streets” run through the centre of the long axis of every third floor of the building, with , and

, with a .

Unlike many of the inferior system-built blocks it inspired the Unité is

http://www.marseille-citeradieuse.org/http://www.wikipedia.org/http://karrick-studio3.blogspot.com/

Unité d'Habitation

RESEARCH

AFTER

RESEARCH

Existing

Social

Condensers

Le Corbusier's utopian city living design was repeated in

. The other Unités were built in 1955, 1957, 1963 and 1965.

The building inspired several housing complexes including the Alton West estate in Roehampton, London, and Park Hill in Sheffield. These buildings have attracted a great deal of criticism.Other, more successful, manifestations of the Unité include Chamberlin, Powell and Bon's Barbican Estate (completed 1982), Gordon Tait's Samuda Estate, Isle of Dogs (1965) and Ernõ Goldfinger's Trellick Tower (1972), all in London.

four more buildings with this name and a very similar design

Nantes-Rezé Berlin-Westend Briey

Firminy

http://www.open2.net/modernity/

Unité d'Habitation

Alton Westhttp://www.open2.net/modernity/

Trellick Towerhttp://architecture-buildingconstruction.blogspot.com/

Unitésin Berlin