Design and Futures: Le Corbusier, Man or Mouse?

Le Corbusier in 1946 infiltrated the city of Marseilles and proposed a project named, Unite d’Habitation. The practisien envisioned a utopian ideal that is captured simply in the following abstract,

‘I want to restore the human spirit under conditions of nature…which has been lost.’1

Specifically, he designed a tower block to house 300 residents. In the years to come, such buildings became prey to vandalism, neglect, poverty, and despair. I ask, why? Le Corbusier engineered spaces that were compact and the Unite d’Habitation was ‘extremely intimate’2 in this respect. I question if those spaces, being of a close and personal nature, influence our behaviours and actions?

Popular culture illustrates our human desire to escape, temporarily, from our former self and become something other. Randal Kleiser’s 1992 science fiction film, Honey I Blew Up The Kid, portrays a child who has been blown up in giant proportion, and ancient Greek literature in the way of Homer’s The Odyssey narrates encounters with giants and other creatures alike. Fiction presents us with depictions of the human body that are larger than their true to life counterpart. Liberating the body in this way reflects humanity's desire for freedom of space, freedom of movement, and freedom of action. Le Corbusier endeavoured to restore the human spirit, although by densely populating his concrete giants the occupier’s perception of self shifts. The inhabitant becomes aware of their microscopic existence in comparison to the imposing presence of the Unite d’Habitation. Such places resonate feelings of alienation and anxiety. Disembodied, the human spirit is inescapably put out like a flame turned to smoke. I for one admire the vision of pioneers such as Le Corbusier, but history has revealed that architecture must adapt and evolve to a rapidly shifting economically and technologically charged global climate.

‘Innovative, disembedded technologies…render traditional assumptions about planning and managing the future inappropriate and consequently the language of prediction and control loses its pertinence…notions of predictability…have indeed been overtaken by their own failures to secure any calculable future.’3

1. Charles-Edward Jeanneret, Le Corbusier The Art of Architecture (London: Barbican Art Gallery, 2009).
2. Charles-Edward Jeanneret, Le Corbusier The Art of Architecture (London: Barbican Art Gallery, 2009).
3. Barbara Adam, Ulrich Beck and Joost Van Loon, eds., The Risk Society and Beyond: Critical Issues for Social Theory (London: Sage Publications, 2000), 6.