The Unite d'Habitation in Marseille, France, is a modernist housing block designed by the architect Le Corbusier, with the painter-architect Nadir Afonso among his collaborators, built between 1947 and 1952. The building holds 337 apartments across 23 different layouts on 12 stories, all raised off the ground on massive concrete pilotis, and its wide internal corridors, running along every third floor to serve the apartments on the floors above and below, are known as streets in the sky. Built in bare, unfinished reinforced concrete, known in French as beton brut, largely because of postwar steel and material shortages, the building became a founding example of the architectural style later named Brutalism after that material choice. Its rooftop is treated as a communal terrace, fitted with sculptural ventilation stacks, a running track and a shallow paddling pool, and the Marseille building served as the model for several later Unite d'Habitation blocks Le Corbusier built elsewhere in Europe; UNESCO added it to the World Heritage list in 2016.
Facts
Building TypeResidential apartment building 1 Completed Year Classification
Standing Status Building Type
Building Type (category) Connections
Associated With
Has Building Type
Entity-backed identity for the building-type enum value this building already carries, resolved to an architecture concept by an explicit value-to-entity map (phase 3 bucket conversion, docs\design_entity_backed_browse_buckets_20260928.md). The building-type fact itself stays on the building unchanged.
In the Other Atlases
- Also in Geography Atlas: France, located there.
Sources
1. Unite d'habitation, Wikipedia
Lead section, description
comprises 337 apartments of 23 different layouts across 12 storeys
Lead section, construction dates
built between 1947 and 1952
Lead section, location
located in the southern part of Marseille, France
Entity description and the lead of the Wikipedia article
The Unite d'Habitation in Marseille, France, is a modernist housing block designed by the architect Le Corbusier, with the painter-architect Nadir Afonso among his collaborators, built between 1947 and 1952. The building holds 337 apartments across 23 different layouts on 12 stories, all raised off the ground on massive concrete pilotis, and its wide internal corridors, running along every third floor to serve the apartments on the floors above and below, are known as streets in the sky. Built in bare, unfinished reinforced concrete, known in French as beton brut, largely because of postwar steel and material shortages, the building became a founding example of the architectural style later named Brutalism after that material choice. Its rooftop is treated as a communal terrace, fitted with sculptural ventilation stacks, a running track and a shallow paddling pool, and the Marseille building served as the model for several later Unite d'Habitation blocks Le Corbusier built elsewhere in Europe; UNESCO added it to the World Heritage list in 2016.
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