Case Study No. I | Les Quartiers Modernes Fruges
In the 1920s, Le Corbusier was commissioned by Henry Frugès to design a community to house the workers of his sugar factory. The community was largely deemed unsuccessful; many workers were uninterested in living there and those that did, made adjustments to their housing. When asked how he felt about the residents’ customizations, Le Corbusier famously replied, “You know, life is always right; it is the architect who is wrong.” As Ada Louise Huxtable stated in a 1981 New York Times article, “This was not a confession of error. It was the recognition of the validity of process over the sanctity of ideology.”
Architectural Context
Le Corbusier’s 1923 collection of essays (known in English as "Towards a New Architecture") is contextualized by the advancement of technology and industrial practices and the aftermath of WWI which led to a housing shortage. The architect’s interest was in solving a social and architectural problem through technological and algebraic means. Taken with his theories, industrialist Henri Frugès commissioned Le Corbusier to see Pessac as a “laboratory” and reimagine low-cost social housing for the workers of his sugar factory. Together, they envisioned a garden city of 135 units on the outskirts of Bordeaux (though only 51 would ever be built). Six different modules (Arcade, Skyscraper or “Gratte-ciel,” Staggered or “Quinconces,” Zig Zag, “Jumelles” Twins, and Freestanding or ”Vrinat”) would explore a slightly different relationship to its neighbor and employ the five principles of Le Corbusier’s modern architecture: pillars, roof garden, open floor plan, long windows, and open facades. Additionally, each module would employ colors that would later appear in his custom system, first occurring as a study of the impact of naturally occurring colors on architectural atmosphere.
Even in this brief summary, we start to understand how closely Le Corbusier considered our human relationship to space, to each other, and to our natural surroundings.
Questions for Consideration
How do we make space in design for life to unfold outside of design intent?
How do we allow for (and even encourage) the desire in users to make a space their own?