Ville Radieuse - Spreading The Idea

Spreading The Idea

Throughout the thirties Le Corbusier spread the message of his new, ideal city. Discussions at the fourth CIAM meeting on board the SS Patris bound for Athens were incorporated into Corbusier's book, The Radiant City (published in 1935). This in turn influenced the Athens Charter.

Between 1931 and 1940 Corbusier undertook a series of town planning proposals for Algiers. During that period Algiers was the administrative capital of French North Africa. Although he was not officially invited to submit proposals for the city, he knew the mayor was interested so he tried his luck. The plan had to incorporate the existing casbah whilst allowing for the linear growth of the increasing population. The resulting Obus Plan was a variation on the Ville Radieuse, adapted for a very specific culture and landscape. It comprised four main elements: an administration area by the water in two slab blocks, convex and concave apartment blocks for the middle classes up on the slopes above the city, an elevated roadway on a north-south axis above the casbah and a meandering viaduct with a road on top meandering down the coast.

In 1933 in Nemours, North Africa he proposed eighteen Unité apartment blocks orientated north-south against a backdrop of mountains.

On his 1935 trip to the United States, Corbusier criticised the skyscrapers of Manhattan for being too small and too close together. He proposed replacing all the existing buildings with one huge Cartesian Skyscraper equipped with living and working units. This would have cleared the way for more parkland, thus conforming to the ideals of the Ville Radieuse.

Even as late as the 1940s he was trying to court both Mussolini and the Vichy government to adopt his ideal city plans.

From 1945 to 1952 he undertook the design and construction of the Unité d'Habitation in Marseilles. The Unité embodied the ideas of the Ville Radieuse that he had developed in Nemours and Algiers.