Who designed the Unité d'Habitation in Marseille?

Le Corbusier designed the Unité d'Habitation in Marseille. Built after the Second World War, it was the first and most famous realization of his idea for a self-contained “vertical city.”

Constructed between 1947 and 1952, the Marseille building was intended to address France’s severe postwar housing shortage while experimenting with a new form of collective living. Apartments are arranged as interlocking duplexes, with interior “streets” serving as circulation and social spaces rather than merely corridors.

The building stands on pilotis, or reinforced-concrete supports, lifting the main residential block above ground level. It also includes shops, communal facilities and a rooftop terrace. Le Corbusier’s Modulor system, based on human proportions and mathematical relationships, influenced its dimensions and design.

The structure’s rough béton brut concrete became strongly associated with Brutalism, although the building is more precisely a modernist housing experiment. Charlotte Perriand collaborated on built-in furniture and kitchens, and engineers and fellow designers helped realize the project, but Le Corbusier is the canonical architect credited with its design.