Unité d'habitation

[2][3] In 1920, Le Corbusier started to develop the Unité d'Habitation type, which became influential in 20th century modernism and contemporary residential design in Europe.

In the 1980s, a team from ETH Zurich surveyed several apartments in Marseille and built several full-scale models for exhibitions in Paris, Karlsruhe, Tokyo and New York.

One of Le Corbusier's most famous works, it proved enormously influential and is often cited as the initial inspiration for the Brutalist architectural style and philosophy.

[11] The Marseille building, developed with Le Corbusier's designers Shadrach Woods and George Candilis, comprises 337 apartments of 23 different layouts across 12 storeys, and all supported by large pilotis.

The building also incorporates shops including an architectural bookshop,[12] a rooftop gallery, educational facilities, a hotel that is open to the public,[13] and a restaurant, "Le Ventre de l'Architecte" ("The Belly of the Architect").

The flat roof is designed as a communal terrace with sculptural ventilation stacks, a running track, and a shallow paddling pool for children.

[16] In the 1980 documentary The Shock of the New, Robert Hughes argued that it had "one of the great rooves of the world" that conceptually reflected Le Corbusier's admiration for the Acropolis, but criticized other aspects of the building, including the unused space underneath and the small dwellings.

[17] Unlike many of the blocks it inspired, which lack the original's generous proportions, communal facilities and parkland setting, the Unité is popular with its residents and is now mainly occupied by upper middle-class professionals.

In England such buildings include the Alton West estate in Roehampton, London, and Park Hill in Sheffield, both of which have attracted much negative criticism.

The triple-level roof garden of Great Arthur House (1957) inspired by Le Corbusier's Unité d'Habitation is a fine vantage point towards St Paul's Cathedral and the Barbican Estate and has panoramic views across London.

[20][21][22] The apartment building Polska Akademia Nauk (Polish Academy of Sciences) in 20 Wiejska Street in Warsaw, Poland was inspired by Le Corbusier's principles.

Other Polish buildings inspired by the Unité d'Habitation include the Za Żelazną Bramą Housing Estate (Behind the Iron Gate) in Warsaw, and Superjednostka in Katowice, built in the 1970s.