Ville Radieuse was an unrealised project designed by the French-Swiss architect Le Corbusier

Le Corbusier

Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, better known as Le Corbusier , was a Swiss-born French architect, designer, urbanist, writer and painter, famous for being one of the pioneers of what now is called modern architecture. He was born in Switzerland and became a French citizen in 1930...

 in 1924.

Although Le Corbusier had exhibited his ideas for the ideal city, the Ville Contemporaine

Ville Contemporaine

The Ville Contemporaine was an unrealised project to house three million inhabitants designed by the French-Swiss architect Le Corbusier in 1922....

 in the 1920s, during the early 1930s, after contact with international planners he began work on the Ville Radieuse. In 1930 he had become an active member of the syndicalist movement

Syndicalism

Syndicalism is a type of economic system proposed as a replacement for capitalism and an alternative to state socialism, which uses federations of collectivised trade unions or industrial unions...

 and proposed the Ville Radieuse as a blueprint of social reform.

The principles of the Ville Radieuse were incorporated into his later publication, the Athens Charter

Athens Charter

The Athens Charter, or Charte d'Athènes was a document about urban planning published by the Swiss architect, Le Corbusier in 1943. The work was based upon Le Corbusier’s Ville Radieuse book of 1935 and urban studies undertaken by the Congrès International d'Architecture Moderne in the early...

 published in 1943.

His utopian ideal formed the basis of a number of urban plans during the 1930s and 1940s culminating in the design and construction of the first Unité d’Habitation in Marseilles in 1952.

The development of an ideal

In the late 1920s Le Corbusier lost confidence in big business to realise his dreams of utopia

Utopia

Utopia is an ideal community or society possessing a perfect socio-politico-legal system. The word was imported from Greek by Sir Thomas More for his 1516 book Utopia, describing a fictional island in the Atlantic Ocean. The term has been used to describe both intentional communities that attempt...

 represented in the Ville Contemporaine and Plan Voisin (1925). Influenced by the linear city ideas of Milyutin and the theories of the syndicalist movement (that he had recently joined) he formulated a new vision of the ideal city, the Ville Radieuse. It represented an utopian dream to reunite man within a well-ordered environment. Unlike the radial design of the Ville Contemporaine, the Ville Radieuse was a linear city based upon the abstract shape of the human body with head, spine, arms and legs. The design maintained the idea of high-rise housing blocks, free circulation and abundant green spaces proposed in his earlier work. The blocks of housing were laid out in long lines stepping in and out. Like the Swiss Pavilion

Pavillon Suisse

The Pavillon Suisse or Swiss pavilion was built in 1932 at the Cité International Universitaire, Paris.The construction of this Pavilion was entrusted, without a competition, by the Committee of Swiss Universities to Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret who at first refused to be charged with this...

 they were glazed on their south side and were raised up on pilotis

Piloti

Pilotis, or piers, are supports such as columns, pillars, or stilts that lift a building above ground or water. They are traditionally found in stilt and pole dwellings such as fishermen's huts in Asia and Scandinavia using wood and in elevated houses such as Old Queenslanders in Australia's...

. They had roof terraces and running tracks on their roofs.

The Ville Radieuse also made reference to Corbusier's work in Russia

Russia

Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

. In 1930, he wrote a 59 page Reply to Moscow when commenting upon a competition in Moscow

Moscow

Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...

. The report contained drawings defining an alternative urban model for the planning of the city. He exhibited the first representations of his ideas at the third CIAM

Congrès International d'Architecture Moderne

The Congrès internationaux d'architecture moderne – CIAM was an organization founded in 1928 and disbanded in 1959, responsible for a series of events and congresses arranged around the world by the most prominent architects of the time, with the objective of spreading the principles of the Modern...

 meeting in Brussels in 1930 (although he withdrew the Moscow proposals). In addition he developed proposals for the Ferme Radieuse (Radiant Farm) and Village Radieuse (Radiant Village).

Spreading the idea

Throughout the thirties Le Corbusier spread the message of his new, ideal city. Discussions at the fourth CIAM meeting on board the SS Patris bound for Athens were incorporated into Corbusier's book, The Radiant City (published in 1935). This in turn influenced the Athens Charter.

Between 1931 and 1940 Corbusier undertook a series of town planning proposals for Algiers

Algiers

' is the capital and largest city of Algeria. According to the 1998 census, the population of the city proper was 1,519,570 and that of the urban agglomeration was 2,135,630. In 2009, the population was about 3,500,000...

. During that period Algiers was the administrative capital of French North Africa

French colonial empire

The French colonial empire was the set of territories outside Europe that were under French rule primarily from the 17th century to the late 1960s. In the 19th and 20th centuries, the colonial empire of France was the second-largest in the world behind the British Empire. The French colonial empire...

. Although he was not officially invited to submit proposals for the city, he knew the mayor was interested so he tried his luck. The plan had to incorporate the existing casbah

Casbah

The Casbah ) is specifically the citadel of Algiers in Algeria and the traditional quarter clustered around it. More generally, a kasbah is the walled citadel of many North African cities and towns...

 whilst allowing for the linear growth of the increasing population. The resulting Obus Plan was a variation on the Ville Radieuse, adapted for a very specific culture and landscape. It comprised four main elements: an administration area by the water in two slab blocks, convex and concave apartment blocks for the middle classes up on the slopes above the city, an elevated roadway on a north-south axis above the casbah and a meandering viaduct

Viaduct

A viaduct is a bridge composed of several small spans. The term viaduct is derived from the Latin via for road and ducere to lead something. However, the Ancient Romans did not use that term per se; it is a modern derivation from an analogy with aqueduct. Like the Roman aqueducts, many early...

 with a road on top meandering down the coast.

In 1933 in Nemours, North Africa he proposed eighteen Unité apartment blocks orientated north-south against a backdrop of mountains.

On his 1935 trip to the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

, Corbusier criticised the skyscrapers of Manhattan

Manhattan

Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...

 for being too close together. He proposed replacing all the existing buildings with one huge "Cartesian Skyscraper" equipped with living and working units. This would have cleared the way for more parkland, thus conforming to the ideals of the Ville Radieuse.

Even as late as the 1940s he was trying to court both Mussolini

Benito Mussolini

Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini was an Italian politician who led the National Fascist Party and is credited with being one of the key figures in the creation of Fascism....

 and the Vichy government

Vichy France

Vichy France, Vichy Regime, or Vichy Government, are common terms used to describe the government of France that collaborated with the Axis powers from July 1940 to August 1944. This government succeeded the Third Republic and preceded the Provisional Government of the French Republic...

to adopt his ideal city plans.

From 1945 to 1952 he undertook the design and construction of the Unité d'Habitation in Marseilles. The Unité embodied the ideas of the Ville Radieuse that he had developed in Nemours and Algiers.