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Cité Radieuse: The Latest Architecture and News

AD Round Up: Unbuilt Classics

This AD Round Up is dedicated to unbuilt classics, a selection of projects and ideas that, although never built, contributed greatly to the canon of twentieth century architecture. In 1920, Buckminister Fuller designed the Dymaxion House, which displayed forward-thinking innovations in sustainability and prefabrication. In 1924, Le Corbusier’s radical plan for Ville Radieuse (The Radiant City) had an extensive influence upon modern urban planning and led to the development of new high-density housing typologies. In the same year Friedrick Kiesler introduced his "Endless House", the basis for his subsequent manifesto of Correalism. Eight years later in 1932, Philip Johnson and Henry-Russell Hitchcock curated the “Modern Architecture: International exhibition” at the MoMA, introducing the emerging International Style and laying the principles for Modern architecture. And finally, one of Archigram’s most famous utopian visions, the Plug-In City, proposed by Peter Cook in 1964, offered a fascinating new approach to urbanism and reversed traditional perceptions of infrastructure’s role in the city.

AD Classics: Ville Radieuse / Le Corbusier

AD Classics: Ville Radieuse / Le Corbusier - Master Plan, Facade
via land8.com

Ville Radieuse (The Radiant City) is an unrealized urban masterplan by Le Corbusier, first presented in 1924 and published in a book of the same name in 1933. Designed to contain effective means of transportation, as well as an abundance of green space and sunlight, Le Corbusier’s city of the future would not only provide residents with a better lifestyle, but would contribute to creating a better society. Though radical, strict and nearly totalitarian in its order, symmetry and standardization, Le Corbusier’s proposed principles had an extensive influence on modern urban planning and led to the development of new high-density housing typologies.

AD Classics: Ville Radieuse / Le Corbusier - Master Plan, Facade, CityscapeAD Classics: Ville Radieuse / Le Corbusier - Master PlanAD Classics: Ville Radieuse / Le Corbusier - Master PlanAD Classics: Ville Radieuse / Le Corbusier - Master PlanAD Classics: Ville Radieuse / Le Corbusier - More Images+ 9

Le Corbusier's Cité Radieuse Rooftop to Host Contemporary Art Center

When the gym and solarium on the 20-century’s most famous rooftop terrace - elevated 18-stories above Le Corbusier’s Cité Radieuse - went up for sale in 2010, French designer Ito Morabito of Ora-ïto immediately jumped on the opportunity and purchased the space. With the support of the Foundation Le Corbusier, Ora-ïto initiated a campaign to restore the 1950‘s structure to its original state, by removing an addition that blocked the spaces 360-degree views of the city, and transform it into a contemporary art center, named the MAMO for “Marseille Modulor” - as a nod to New York’s MOMA.