15 Research Paper Qianwen Deng 12/14/2018 Topic: This paper describes the design and influence of a seventeen-story apartment building called the Unité d’Habitation that was built between 1947 to 1952 in the southern French city, Marseilles. The Swiss-French architect Le Corbusier designed the building and him who expected to be the prototype for mass housing from the modern period. This building also became the apex of his life’s work. It had an enormous influence on the architectural profession, also formulated design principles after World War II. The development of the design of the building is explained, together with the relevant influences. A critical investigation concentrates on the kitchen design is presented, along with a commentary on its role as a model for the new modern lifestyle. Introduction Among the masters who laid the foundation of modern architecture and design, my favorite is Le Corbusier. Unlike the German absolutism of Mies Van der Rohe and Gropius, Le Corbusier who is from France is more of an artist. Perhaps the reinforced concrete houses of Mies Van der Rohe and Gropius can be directly copied in large quantities. But the works of Le Corbusier are always modern and straightforward at first glance, but with a particular taste, the core must be classical and elegant. Unité d’Habitation's apartments typically reflect this. As entrusted by the French government, designed to accommodate as many people as residential buildings, Le Corbusier did not merely develop it into today's great matchbox all over the world. This design was to meet the most modern requirements for hygiene, aesthetics, and comfort.However, he spent a lot of state of mind, the personalization, refinement, let these people living at the houses to exclaim and got amazed by the modern lifestyle: buildings can also be so designed, the apartments can also decorate so. After World War II, French government asked Le Corbusier to make proposals for the housing of 14,000 new inhabitants in Saint-Gaudens, for a new industrial zone next to the port of La Rochelle, and to re-build the half of Saint-Dié that had been wantonly destroyed by the retreating German army. Then, Le Corbusier made his proposal by combing his five points principles to design a new type of architecture for united housing: Unité d’Habitation, built-in 1952 in Marseille, the 18-story concrete box is a symbol of the brutalist architecture that inspired Le Corbusier’s vision of a new city. Unite d’Habitation was the catalyst for the widespread adoption of Modern Movement architecture after World War II. The habitat residence should not be a landmark building like the Sydney opera house, but a prototype of a vast number of buildings built around the world. How did Le Corbusier make this significant movement that influenced the Modernism to later French design principles? What the outcomes derives between Le Corbusier and his primary interior designer: Charlotte Perriand, who also.

1. 15
Research Paper
Qianwen Deng
12/14/2018
Topic: This paper describes the design and influence of a
seventeen-story apartment building called the Unité
d’Habitation that was built between 1947 to 1952 in the
southern French city, Marseilles. The Swiss-French architect Le
Corbusier designed the building and him who expected to be the
prototype for mass housing from the modern period. This
building also became the apex of his life’s work. It had an
enormous influence on the architectural profession, also
formulated design principles after World War II.
The development of the design of the building is explained,
together with the relevant influences. A critical investigation
concentrates on the kitchen design is presented, along with a
commentary on its role as a model for the new modern lifestyle.
Introduction
Among the masters who laid the foundation of modern
architecture and design, my favorite is Le Corbusier. Unlike the
German absolutism of Mies Van der Rohe and Gropius, Le
Corbusier who is from France is more of an artist. Perhaps the
reinforced concrete houses of Mies Van der Rohe and Gropius
can be directly copied in large quantities. But the works of Le
Corbusier are always modern and straightforward at first glance,
but with a particular taste, the core must be classical and
elegant.
Unité d’Habitation's apartments typically reflect this. As
entrusted by the French government, designed to accommodate
as many people as residential buildings, Le Corbusier did not
merely develop it into today's great matchbox all over the
world. This design was to meet the most modern requirements
for hygiene, aesthetics, and comfort.However, he spent a lot of

2. state of mind, the personalization, refinement, let these people
living at the houses to exclaim and got amazed by the modern
lifestyle: buildings can also be so designed, the apartments can
also decorate so.
After World War II, French government asked Le
Corbusier to make proposals for the housing of 14,000 new
inhabitants in Saint-Gaudens, for a new industrial zone next to
the port of La Rochelle, and to re-build the half of Saint-Dié
that had been wantonly destroyed by the retreating German
army.
Then, Le Corbusier made his proposal by combing his five
points principles to design a new type of architecture for united
housing: Unité d’Habitation, built-in 1952 in Marseille, the 18-
story concrete box is a symbol of the brutalist architecture that
inspired Le Corbusier’s vision of a new city. Unite d’Habitation
was the catalyst for the widespread adoption of Modern
Movement architecture after World War II. The habitat
residence should not be a landmark building like the Sydney
opera house, but a prototype of a vast number of buildings built
around the world. How did Le Corbusier make this significant
movement that influenced the Modernism to later French design
principles? What the outcomes derives between Le Corbusier
and his primary interior designer: Charlotte Perriand, who also
did the kitchen design for the Unité d’Habitation? How did Le
Corbusier change the direction of Perriand’s work and, in turn,
influence his architectural style? How did their vision of
modern interior design help shape attitudes both inside and
outside the French design community? Those questions will
further investigated in this research paper.
The significant movement of French Modernism.
The modern architecture: Unité d’Habitation. Also called
vertical garden city by its cross-compound structure in an open
landscape. It has 23 types of rooms and can live in 337
households, enabling families or individuals of various
structures to find places to live in. Its top floor has gardens for

3. children to play in, and the 7-8th floors of the apartment are
public spaces for shops and rests, the whole architecture is like
a small city. Many of the 337 units are bidirectional, provide
with views of the Mediterranean and hillsides at the same time,
and most have two-story living rooms and balconies.
Color scheme for the building
The first thing in the vision is its vibrant color. Mainly by
red, yellow and blue for the trichromatic decks. These colors
are not indiscriminate. Le Corbusier believes that blue,
representing the sky and evoking memories of the sea, is a
"primary color" close to nature. And red, have tease means to
also have the burning desire at the same time. Yellow, simple,
naive, beautiful. These close to the use of natural primary
colors, to give people a happy, relaxed, harmonious feeling. At
the same time, these three primary colors are the basis for
producing other colors, and that color cannot overshadow each
other and cannot be harmonized, thus giving people a visual
stimulus.As for the question why not use green on the surface, it
is not hard to tell because of the surrounding green plant
environment, and then highlight green on the surface of the
building, which will dilute the visual impact. So the green is
used indoors and in corridors.
Modern living in the micro community
This is a basic unit of a city that is supposed to awaken
people from the drudgery of postwar life and to appreciate the
charm of a community. The house type is rich enough to meet
the needs of various families at that time, in addition to the
basic daily living facilities including supermarket, restaurant,
hotel, laundry room, barber shop and post office. There are
kindergartens, nurseries, adult gyms and specific public activity
space on the roof. These stores were a failure at the beginning.
It wasn't enough to provide them with seven-story services not
only to worship them, but they could only able to attract trade
from residents, so they closed, like the school at the rooftop.
Other amenities are still in occasional use, but the concrete
coolness of the rooftop "garden" is not an attractive leisure

4. destination.
As Le Corbusier indicates: this building is designing not
for particular families. The purpose to design Unité
d’Habitation should be a universal housing type that would be
suitable for people who were to live in the new modern world.
He was designing for his idea of modern people – un homme
type – a type of standard man that was a strange combination of
monk, artist, athlete, worker and intellectual.
Innovated new building structure
Another critical point: various spatial scales are controlled
by Le Corbusier modulus. By designing this architecture, Le
Corbusier invented his own new measuring system which he
called: Le Modulor. ‘just fifteen measure-ments whose
proportions are repeated in all the components of the building,
which despite its huge size ne-vertheless remains on a human
scale’. - Le Corbusier. In the design process, Le Corbusier used
the humanistic thoughts of Leonardo Da Vinci in the
Renaissance to evolve a series of modules, which formed a set
of constant ratio series close to the golden section based on the
sizes of all parts of the male body. He used the modules to
determine all dimensions of buildings.
The Unite d 'construction is the first large-scale structure
to be built entirely on precast concrete wall panels, with the
main structure being cast-in-place reinforced concrete. As the
cast-in-place concrete formwork was removed without any
treatment on the surface, exposing the rough concrete showing
traces of manual operation to a rough, primitive, earthy and
unpretentious artistic effect, it was propagandist as the ancestor
of ‘brutalism.' The structure of the building has several features
(fig 1). The apartments that were L-shaped in cross section, and
second, it had access corridors at every other level. With further
explanation, it has access with every third floor, so called
internal street. The idea was to produce overlapping private and
public spaces called collision zones, where different
communities could interact – as Ginzburg put it ‘the principal
objective of constructivism ... is the definition of the Social

5. Condenser of the age’. The main framework was built on a basic
4.19 m × 4.19 m grid, with the reinforced concrete surface. The
heating system uses pipe air. Even it was not an innovation, but
it was unusual in Europe at the time. Eight fans with heaters and
humidifiers provide warm air. The kitchens, bathrooms and
toilets are all mechanically ventilated. The kitchen also
installed with the popular fixture: icebox.
After the innovation of the Unité d'Habitation.
Increasingly, the boxed towers have attracted derogatory names,
such as "sinking estates" in the UK or "projects" in us. In
France, the properties are known as HLM, short for "
moderately rented housing." HLM quickly became a colloquial
term meaning "interior or inferior." The innovation from the
Unité d'Habitation has led to a large number of these buildings
being demolished. Although, as this paper illustrates, the actual
Unité d'Habitation at Marseille was a prototype itself is a
failure, but it is a brilliant success conceptually - at least for
architects. The physical destruction caused by the World War II
required not only reconstruction but also, in many places were
also seen as a chance for comprehensive slum clearance.
Le Corbusier and Charlotte Perriand
At 1927, Charlotte Perriand already achieved considerable
renown as a talented, innovative designer. When she got
disappointed about to become a women designer, she even
wanted to abandon design and to do agriculture instead. Le
Corbusier’s book encouraged her, and she went to his studio
seeking for a job. First time, she got refused by Le Corbusier
with the comment:"we do not embroider cushions here.” After
Le Corbusier saw her previous work at the Salon d’Automne, he
decided to hire her to do his interiors for his architectures.
However, at that time Le Corbusier couldn’t pay them, far from
regular salary. She still insisted on working for him because the
admire and encouragement, Perriand got her life support from
her husband, an old Englishman, who also supported her to
learn private architecture lessons.

6. Before Perriand joined Le Corbusier’s design
organization, he already defined furniture as ‘portable
equipment’- creatures in functional and efficient. Which also
could be mass-produced and standardized, should not take too
much characteristic. The design purpose should more towards to
industrially produced and include technical aspect. Even he had
been trained from a decorative arts school, by next design style
movements, he rejected the original furnishing idea from the
entire field of decorative arts, the concept of design new
modern lifestyle became his renovated new theme.
The interior design from Le Corbusier’s design
When Le Corbusier and Jeanneret got frustrated and felt
failure from an exhibition, display with German designs. The
feedback and judgment he got from the journalists were all
complaining the inefficiency furnishings of his kitchens and the
ambiguous term of ‘engineer’s aesthetic.’ Roth, which was
Perriand’s architecture professor introduced her, as an expert to
the domestic domains, as well as an original modern sensibility
that must have appealed to Le Corbusier. Even Perriand was
trained more like an ‘upholsterer.’ However, she developed
herself into furniture/interior designer by showing the public of
her renovation for her own apartment in Paris. This achievement
also became the key factor that convinced Le Corbusier: women
may be more capable of handling the domestic design problems.
As she keeps innovating and developing new modern design as
women, which also profoundly influence the work of Le
Corbusier. At the same time, Perriand always following Le
Corbusier’s lead according to his new ideas and pursued similar
studies. Under working at Le Corbusier’s atelier, Perriand
gained more reputation on modern interior design, and she
became more successful in solving the grave social problems
such as housing, domestic living, women position in the social
latter. At one hand, her design remained the attention to what
might be seen as traditionally feminine attributes, but also in an
innovative perspective: transfer functions, furnishings to a more
‘outgoing,’ independent and energetic way.

7. However, Perriand’s concept of new modern domestic
design fits Le Corbusier’s insistence between machine-wised
functionalism with humanism: types of furniture are portable
and apply to different spaces, instead of designing specific
location for particular pieces of furniture. (This against the
design principle from Mies Van der Rohe). The modern
domestic furniture should be more generic and convenient for
people’s daily use.
On the other hand, their design purpose was not for general
and commonly apply to all range of residents. Despite all the
material and expenses, they were focusing or few middle-class
residents that would have appealed only to an artistic or
intellectual elite.
Kitchen later became more critical in a modern family. Le
Corbusier previously thought it is only used by the servant, not
of vital importance. Perriand made him changed his attitude.
She was trained to emphasize the practical aspects of daily life;
also, as a woman, she thought it was a significant step to beak
the boundaries, bring out the women in the kitchen to entertain
with public spaces.
“The kitchen is not precisely the sanctuary of the house,
but it is certainly one of the most important places. Kitchen and
living room, both are the rooms where one lives”. (Le
Corbusier). Under Perriand’s New Women’s influences, Le
Corbusier put more effort on the kitchen, as an openly, visible
women domain in the residential housing. Rather than just being
functional and aesthetic innovative for the kitchen, Perriand
wanted the furniture became more like ‘a unit,’ which can
naturally and proceed harmony to the environment. Especially
after she left Atiler, Le Corbusier’s studio and went to Japan
and got attracted by the philosophy of Tealism on late 1940s.
She started to build a new realism- a pragmatic commitment to
industrial production and the commercial market, inspired by a
Zen-inspired spirituality that renounced personality and
material display. After she came back from Japan, she started to
concentrated more about social content that focused on her later

8. design, with gender issue and functionality beyond industrial
and mechanical revolution.
After World War 2, her design even became more practical
and radical. She had also plunged into investigations of serial
production and modular unites. The ‘open’ kitchen of the Unite
d’Habitation in Marseilles became a prototype for Perriand’s
radical kitchen design.
Le Corbusier with women designers
Compare the relationship of Le Corbusier with Charlotte
Perriand to Elieen Gray, two woman interior designers. Gray is
more towards ‘equal’ relationship, they respected each other at
the beginning, and Le Corbusier gets to know Eli Gray because
of her husband, and she is openly gay, which means she did not
have a child with her husband. It is a foreshadow for the later
conflict between a feminist woman designer with a famous
architect with a strong ego. Unlike Eli Gray, Perriand always
admired Le Corbusier. If it were not him, she would completely
abandon design and to agriculture. Indeed, she always obeys his
requirement and convinced Le Corbusier from her feminine
attitudes. As a women, a wife to her husband, a mother to her
family. Perriand also thought Le Corbusier to learn and respect
about domestic living arrangement too. She was willing to put
her accomplishments as secondary to attach importance to Le
Corbusier’s new idea.
The kitchen from Unité d’Habitation
Other than its brutalism exterior surface from Unité
d’Habitation, the interior space was delicate designed to create
a new lifestyle. The purpose to design this mass housing was
not for practical comfort, but more than a bare existence, will
be offered to modern families. It was critical for Le Corbusier
to design a post-war residential housing with the latest
technology. In addition, Le Corbusier, Pierre Jeanneret and
Charlotte Perriand had been working on creating a type of built-
in storage wall. It is an interior furnishing system with built-in
cupboards with sliding doors which contains space-saving

9. feature.
Various people were involved tightly in the design of the
Unite d'Habitation. At 1946, André Wogenscky, who was an
architect and associated with Le Corbusier, had published a
functional arrangement for kitchens including basic
requirements, technical equipment. At the same year, Le
Corbusier's studio: Atelier have assigned Charlotte Perriand to
design the interiors of the Unité d'Habitation's apartments and
especially, the kitchen units. She developed a model that unified
the kitchen layouts that widely and commonly apply to modern
domestic housing. Wogenscky's wife also participated with the
kitchen design and helped Perriand to be modified and
simplified the plans according to her house-wife identities. ‘The
kitchen in Marseille, should become the center of French family
life …’ (Marcus, 2000, p. 158). Perriand indicated that the
kitchen should no longer separated or isolated from the daily
social life, it should be perfectly blend into the living space,
forming a public communication spot. Charlotte Perriand
described this new housewife area as a bartender (Perriand et
al., 1985, p. 500).
After entering the entrance door, the kitchen comes into
the vision. It is only 4.8 square meters. Seven colors were
specified to match the exterior color scheme: white, yellow
ochre, green, umber, light blue, and light and dark grey. Also
because of the kitchen layout did not come with the windows,
the colors and open structure also helped with brightening the
interior space with the lack of natural light. The layout of the
kitchen is u-shaped, with the bottom half equipped with an
integral refrigerator console and a two-tank sink, as well as a
collector of vegetable peels. Below the sink is a double drawer
cabinet for vegetables. The combination cabinet is in L shape. A
fluorescent light tube is placed on the bottom shelf to illuminate
the operating surface. The open kitchen plan blurs the
boundaries between kitchen and living area. The counters’
cabinets open for both sides with two sliding doors. The stoves
and tableware have specific and perceived storage spots. With

10. the specifically manufactured kitchen furnishings, the kitchen is
like a laboratory with a systematic planning system. There are
two kitchen units were used at the Unité d’Habitation: the
cuisine courante, installed in 295 apartments and the cuisine
spéciale, produced for the 26 smaller living units. Moreover, the
kitchen arrangements were all come with two versions: left and
right, they are in the same design but depend on the L-shaped
apartment’s layout.
The mass production of the kitchen required quick process.
The construction team had to complete two prototypes kitchen
in five months, as well as the continuous production of 321
built-in kitchens, about 2,500 cabinets, and cupboards. Many
parts are glued together with nails and glue. However, careful
manufacturing techniques were applied when necessary. To
provide sufficient stability, manufacturers used dovetail and
box joints. Generally speaking, the construction of furniture is
accurate and firm. After 60 years of use, most of the fragments
remain intact.
Recent record
In the fall of 2011, when MoMA group travel to Munich,
Germany and try to examine a kitchen that the Architecture and
Design Department wished to purchase. They found the
collection of an assembled kitchen from Unité d’Habitation in
the collector’s garage by accident. Since the truth was a rare
condition for an old kitchen setup which did not be restored yet.
The MoMA group bought the Unité d’Habitation’s kitchen with
good conditions and hoped to do the reassembled exhibition in
New York. After it had been purchased, it was again
disassembled in Munich and shipped to New York. Not
surprisingly, for this kitchen that nearly 60 years old, there
were approximately six layers of over-paint.
One of the delightful element from this kitchen collection
is, this is displayed not as antiquity, not even an artwork. In the
interview, MoMa make it clear just how different this was from
the items they are used to dealing with: "Unlike the majority of

11. the collection at MoMA, this work functioned as a household
kitchen for half a century prior to its acquisition, and so can be
interpreted both as an artefact and as a design object." It
represents a symbol of a modern household kitchen. The goal
for the museum was to highlight its usage and convenience
rather than just the appearance. Instead, the construction team
did the repairs to the kitchen’s assemblage that to present the
kitchen in a way that best shows the original design and initial
color schemes achieved by Le Corbusier and Charlotte Perriand.
On the other hand, they aimed to restore the kitchen type that as
close to Perriand and Le Corbusier’s vision of a postwar private
kitchen in France as possible. Also in a way to enhance the
concept of the kitchen design from Perriand and Le Corbusier: a
tautly designed, multi-functional, mechanized life routine that
expresses the idea of an absolute solution to the modern social,
domestic housing at the 1950s.
Conclusion
The idea of an indoor living being like a sea journey runs
through the design of the Unite d'Habitation. Indeed, life and
travel have something in common; both contain beginning and
end. They are not confined to clear facts and concrete things,
but narrate a poem, a story or a drama, and shape and structure
the development and continuation of human life. Under
Charlotte Perriand’s help with the internal planning, Le
Corbusier filters reorganize, redefines, modifies and reappears
in front of people, inheriting the experience left by
predecessors, from the outcome of Unite d’Habitation.
The innovative kitchen design undoubtedly is the critical
and compelling turning point from the Modernism period. It
also highlights the modern French design from the origin of
Modernism: Germany. It broke the conventional border of the
kitchen from the living space, also unify, tightening the concept
of family. Indeed, the new kitchen layout also protrudes women
into a more communal level. To reconsider women identities
concerning the family, to the civic life. Meanwhile, the

12. modernization of the kitchen did not deprive women’s duty as a
housewife, the symbol of the carrier of life. The kitchen idea
derives from Unite d’Habitation spread to the whole Europe,
even to the world-wide range; not only because of its
functionalism and the modern lifestyle principle beyond its
utilization, but also the first step of women play an essential
role in the domestic living, or, social responsibilities with
further development.
The loft of the Unite d’Habitation, with its terrace and
ample sunlight, is built to meet human needs. Unfortunately,
later generations simplified the human things, made directly
into lattice buildings, do not know whether to learn things did
not gain or deliberately forget. The Unite d’Habitation, though a
social residence, emphasize the dignity of the community. After
all these years, are there any revolutionary advances in modern
housing? Do people in cities live with dignity? To answer with
a passage from Le Corbusier: "When you think of houses, you
think of the houses of the rich, but more broadly, the houses of
the unsightly poor. I explore ways and hope that one day,
through these methods, poor people and all honest people will
be able to live in beautiful homes.”
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