Unité d´Habitación Berlin
Le Corbusier, 1957
Le Corbusier, 1957
The Unité d´Habitación in Berlin follows the Marseille Unité built between 1947-52. It was part of the INTERBAU - International Building Exhibition 1957, but was located outside the planned area - Hansaviertel - because of its size.
It is colossal in every way: size, presence, impact, emotion. I personally have a difficult time understanding the criticism this concept of housing has suffered since Post-Modernism.
It offers such spatial quality to its tenants, so much more that we were able to give to most of our citizens since it came out...
It is specially interesting to reflect on how today, huge residential private compounds are being proposed for developing cities in Asia, with much lesser social values and spatial quality, than this one, by top architectural firms and we still keep on blaming Modernism for the creation of horrific post-war suburbs...
We should really take a deep breath and have a new fresh look on the values supported by Modernist Architects: maybe we will find out that many of the solutions that we talk about today as the way for the future are older than we think.
