Le Corbusier; Unité d'habitation of Berlin
15/11/2016.
[Berlin] Germany
metalocus, BRANLY ERNESTO PÉREZ
metalocus, BRANLY ERNESTO PÉREZ
The Berlin Senate organized in 1953 a building international exhibition known as “Interbau”. It was located in the devastated Hansa district, with the aim of settle the request of accommodation and housing in the postwar period. The buildings would be designed by international architects, as the Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer, the Danish Arne Jacobsen, the Finnish Alvar Aalto, the French Pierre Vago and the German Walter Gropius that were some of the participants, who resumed the building tradition of the twenties, which was interrupted by the National Socialism.
From a scale point of view of the Hansa district, the size of the Unité d'habitation was incompatible with it, so the Senate offered Le Corbusier other places of the city. Le Corbusier chose a residential area in the outskirts of Berlin, surrounded by a wood, near to the Olympic Stadium used in the Olympics of 1936.
The residential building is similar to a monolith, placed inside a wooded surroundings, has 530 apartments. With a length of 141.20 metres, a width of 22.96 metres and a height of 52.94 metres, east-west-facing, it has flats in the south façade as well.The 530 apartments are itemised in this manner:
173 one bedroom houses of 34 m².
267 two bedroom houses of 66 m².
85 three bedroom houses of 106 m².
4 four bedroom houses of 145 m².
1 five bedroom houses of 170 m².
All the flats, except the one bedroom ones, are distributed in two floors. The three and four bedroom houses extend from the east to the west side of the building. The apartments were built around ten inner streets (Rues Interieures) that had 130 metres long. The lifts connect these streets with the foyer, which is used as entrance lobby and meeting point for the residents.
The main programmatical differences between the Unité d'habitation of Marsella and Berlin are firstly in the number of houses that go from 337 and 23 building types in Marsella to 530 and only 5 types in Berlin. Secondly, in Marsella the 7th and 8th floors were taken up by trades (shops, restaurants, bars, laundries, hotels, barber’s shops …) while in Berlin a big shop was planned, built among the pillars of the ground floor for the benefit of the inhabitants. Thirdly, the difference in their roofs, that thanks to the social housing regulations of Berlin in this moment, did not allow the construction of the common facilities, as he made in Marsella.
Thanks to the efficacy of the rational development of the building plan and the employment of pieces with concrete finishes, which were produced in a local masonry, the building could be completed in only 18 months; although in the planning and construction phases, some changes in the original Le Corbusier’s project were made, as a request of the costumer.
In 1979 the rented apartment were turned into flats occupied by their owners. Since this moment, the owners’ association has strived to protect the Le Corbusier’s legacy and some necessary restorations were achieved. The residents’ association is the owner of the building designed by Le Corbusier.
Text on wall of the Unité d'Habitation of Le Corbusier in Berlin, Germany. Photography by Branly Perez.
In this vertical city
2.000 inhabitants
The neighbour is not listened
The neighbour is not seen
“in the natural environment”
Sun and Green Space
This is the got freedom:
1. in the near plane
a- the individual
b- the family group
c- the home
2. With regard to the social group
the presence of the common facilities
confirms the individual freedom:
Inseparable binomial individual-community
Charles Édouard Jeanneret-Gris was born in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland in October 6th, 1887. He is best known as Le Corbusier, one of the most important architects of the XX Century that together with Walter Gropius, Ludwig Mies van der Rore and Frank Lloyd Wright rise up as the fathers of the Modern Architecture. In his long career he worked in France, Germany, Switzerland, the United States, Argentina, India and Japan.
Jeanneret was admited in the Art School of La Chaux-de-Fonds in 1902. He knew there Charles l’Éplattenier, his first teacher, and he became interested in architecture. He built his first house, Villa Fallet, in 1906 and one year later he set out his first great journey to Italy. From 1908-1909 he worked in Perret Bother’s Studio, where he focussed on the employment of the concrete and from 1910-1911 he coincided with Mies van der Rohe in this studio in Berlin.
In 1917, Charles Édouard Jeanneret set up finally in Paris. The next year he met the painter Amedée Ozenfant and he displayed his first paints and wrote his first book, Après le Cubismo. In 1919 he founded the magazine l´Esprit nouveau, where he published unnumbered articles, signing with the pseudonym Le Corbusier for first time.
He opened his own Studio in 1922, in the number 35 of the rue de Sèvres. In this decade in when his laboratory epoch started and he carried out great number of activities as painter, essayist and writer. But also as architect he planned some of the most recognizable icons of the modern architecture and developed the principles of the free plan. Some of this works are: the Villa Roche-Jeanneret, the Villa Savoye in Poissy and the Siedlungweissenhof’s houses built in Stuttgart in 1927. It should be pointed out that at the same time; he set out the “five points” of the architecture.
Le Corbusier projected “The contemporary three million population city” in 1922 and in 1925 put forward the Voisin plan of Paris, which are one of his most important urban proposals. Three years later, in 1928, through his initiative the CIAM were created and in 1929 he published his first edition of the Oeuvre Complète.
In the 30s, he collaborated with the magazines Plans and Prélude, where he became enthusiastic about the urbanism and he started, in 1930, to elaborate the drawings of the “Radiant City” as a result of the “Green City” planned for Moscu, his project would be summarized in the “Radiant Villa”, which was enclosed with the projects for Amberes, Stockholm and Paris. By 1931 he presented Argel, a proposal that composed the Obus Plan. And in 1933 the 4th CIAM passed of and there he edited the Athens Document.
Le Corbusier, in 1943, he Developer the “Three Human Establishments Doctrine” and founded the Constructors Assembly for the Architectural Renovation (ASCORAL). He made the project the Unite d´habitation of Marsella in 1952, which was the first one of a serial of similar buildings. At the same time the works of the Chandigarh in India began, where he planned the mean governmental buildings. Nevertheless, in the same decade, he worked in France too, in the Notre-Dame-du-Haut chapel in Ronchamp, in the convent of La Tourette in Éveux, Jaoul’s houses in Neuilly and the Unites d´habitation of Rézé-lès-Nantes, Briey-en-Forêt and Firminy.
He wrote and Publisher his worldwide known study of the Modulor in 1948 followed by a second part in 1953. Meanwhile the next Le Corbusier’s books had a more autobiographic nature, among them the Le poème de l'angle droit (1955), l'Atelier de la recherche patiente (1960) and Mise aupoint (1966) stand out.
Le Corbusier, in the end of his life, created many projects that would not be built, for example a calculus centre for Olivetti en Rho, Milan; a congress in Strasbourg, the France embassy in Brasilia and a new hospital in Venice.
He dead drowned the 27th of August of 1965 in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin.