Ville Radieuse
Ville radieuse (French pronunciation: [vil ʁadjøz], Radiant City) was an unrealised project designed by the French-Swiss architect Le Corbusier in 1930.
Although Le Corbusier had exhibited his ideas for the ideal city, the Ville contemporaine in the 1920s, during contact with international planners he began work on the Ville radieuse. In 1930 he had become an active member of the syndicalist movement 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 published in 1933.
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.
In the late 1920s Le Corbusier lost confidence in big business to realise his dreams of utopia represented in the Ville Contemporaine and Plan Voisin (1925). Influenced by the linear city ideas of Arturo Soria y Mata (which Milyutin also employed) 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 they were glazed on their south side and were raised up on pilotis. They had roof terraces and running tracks on their roofs.
The Ville Radieuse also made reference to Corbusier's work in Russia. In 1930, he wrote a 59-page Reply to Moscow when commenting upon a competition in Moscow. 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 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).
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