UNIT 2 – RADIANT CITY

Le Corbusier’s Radiant City

Le Corbusier was trying to find a fix for the same problems of urban pollution and overcrowding, but unlike Howard, he envisioned building up, not out. His plan, also known as “Towers in the Park,” proposed exactly that: numerous high-rise buildings each surrounded by green space. Each building was set on what planners today would derisively refer to as “superblocks,” and space was clearly delineated between different uses (in the above diagram, this includes “housing,” the “business center,” “factories” and “warehouses”). Le Corbusier’s ideas later reappeared in the design of massive public housing projects in the U.S. in the era of “urban renewal.”

The Ville Radieuse was a linear city based upon the abstract shape of the human body with head, spine, arms and legs. The design maintained the idea of high-rise housing blocks, free circulation and abundant green spaces proposed in his earlier work.[2] The blocks of housing were laid out in long lines stepping in and out. Like the Swiss Pavilion they were glazed on their south side and were raised up on pilotis. They had roof terraces and running tracks on their roofs. The ingenious layout is intended to make maximum use of minimal space. 337 apartments are arranged over twelve storeys, interlocking, jigsaw-like.Those on one side of the central corridors are entered at a single-aspect lower floor before ascending up to a double-aspect upper one (as in the plan below). Those leading off from the other side open into single-aspect upper floors before descending to double-aspect lower ones. Every flat has a double-height reception room with mezzanine and a deep balcony, and stretches from one side of the building to the other, looking east towards the hills on one side and west towards the sea on the other.23 different layouts provide living space for between one and ten people.

Built between 1947 and 1952, Marseille's Radiant City is a different beast altogether. Classily designed to a high standard, today it's a fashionable middle-class Mecca and a vertical township in its own right.

(slides from lakshmanan’s lecture presentation – le corbusiers forays into urbanism)