Le Corbusier planned and built five units of habitation in Marseilles, Nantes, Berlin, Briey, and Firminy between 1945 to 1967. Because of the acute shortage of housing after the war, Le Corbusier designed a multifunctional block of flats that included a large number of apartments on a small plot. The building includes a roof landscape and other urban structures, such as a kindergarten, cinema, pharmacy, and grocery store. The prototype for the unites was built in Marseille in 1952: its revolutionary idea of the vertical city offered entirely novel solutions to urban planning issues and social, aesthetic and structural issues, prompting intense international discussion. The five units, which are now in different states of repair, have been photographed by Arthur Zalewski.
384 pages, 32 x 22 cm, softcover, Spector Books (Leipzig).