Unité d'Habitation

The Unité d'Habitation is a housing complex in Marseille, France, built between 1947 and 1952. Probably the most famous work of Le Corbusier, it proved enormously influential.

The building comprises 337 apartments arranged over twelve stories, all suspended on large piloti. The building also incorporates shops, sporting, medical and educational facilities, and a hotel. The flat roof is designed as a communal terrace with sculptural ventilation stacks and a swimming pool.

Inside, corridors run through the centre of the long axis of every third floor of the building, with each apartment lying on two levels, and stretching from one side of the building to the other, with a balcony.

Le Corbusier hoped to build several more building of similar design, in imitation of his utopian city plans.

The building is constructed in rough-cast concrete, as the hoped-for steel frame proved too expensive. Nevertheless, his replacement material influenced the Brutalist movement, and the building inspired several housing complexes including the Roehampton estate in London and Park Hill in Sheffield.