Unité d'habitation

One always wonders about certain
maxims in architecture, not least
because of their power to arouse
precisely that angle of imagina-
tion. The man who set a pretty,
little box on slender pilotis in
the middle of a field in France,
calling it a machine for living,
struck upon the closest parallels
between the body and the building
since the Erectheion, endowing us
in his frequent style, with pro-
vocation worthy of the vocation
of life. I occupy space, he fam-
ously said, therefore I am. One
comes to appreciate such gnomic
aperçus, wryly; how they beg the
question, with the human frame. 

Here, a woman on a staircase car-
ries a bucket or a basket in one
hand and a bundle on her back, a
shawl shielding her from the sun.
Or is this a male laborer, in a 
cap, shoulders bowed beneath a 
heavy burden in both hands? Yes,
probably, one way or the other. 

The figure is captured by the

architect's loyal photographic

amanuensis, on the site of the

erection of one of the century's

most radical and influential ed-

ifices. I haven't seen the build-

ing better portrayed, in decades

of studying its image. Its asser-

ion of concrete, alone, captures

the project's audacity with its

own naïve exuberance, by a work-

ing figure occupying the space, 

entirely as an ascending shadow.

I admire the gesture. I wonder.

Lucien Hervé

Construction of the

  Unité d'Habitation,

  Marseille

Le Corbusier

  Architect

1949