Completed in 1952, the Unité d'habitation in Marseille, France (more specifically known as the Cité radieuse) is one of the most famous buildings by Swiss-French architect, Le Corbusier. Every architecture student learns about it at one point or another.

It’s famous because it was a model for a new way to live and build cities. Le Corbusier envisioned the apartment building as a kind of vertical city. The corridors weren’t thought of or referred to as corridors, they were instead called streets and lined with shops and businesses.

Of course, Le Corbusier later became famous for inspiring an entire generation of buildings that many people now hate. Some believe he was completely misguided and others believe we simply bastardized his intents. But whatever the case may be, he certainly had a profound impact on cities.

So if you happen to be in Marseille between July 4 to 19 (2015), you should check out an installation at the Unité d’habitation called Apartment N°50.

It’s an installation put on by Jean-Marc Drut and Patrick Blauwart. They are the owners of Apartment N°50 and, since 2008, they have invited a designer or studio to come in and renovate it on an annual basis. They then open it up to the public during the summer. I think that’s a really neat idea and would love to visit sometime.

Click here for the official Apartment N°50 website (it’s in French). The image at the top of this post is from Curbed.

I was recently interviewed by a Berlin-based online magazine called Archipreneur. You can read that interview by clicking here.

If you haven’t yet heard of Archipreneur, you should definitely check it out. It’s a great read. The magazine is dedicated to the intersection of architecture and entrepreneurship. They cover a lot of the same topics that I cover here on Architect This City – such as design, real estate development, technology, and so on. But they are generally more focused on architects (or people trained as architects, in my case) who are doing interesting things other than traditional practice.

In my case, it’s real estate development and this blog. Check out the interview here.

We’ve been talking about a lot of heavy topics here on Architect This City lately. Everything from the contentious Gardiner Expressway East to minimum population densities to density creep. 

So today I thought we could talk about something a bit more fun: architecture.

When I was in New York last weekend, one of the buildings that was on my must-see list was the now under construction West 57th Street by Danish architect Bjarke Ingels. See photo above. (It also happens to be at the exact location where the West Side Highway transitions from elevated to surface boulevard.)

This is supposedly the first North American project for Bjarke Ingels (he also has a project in Vancouver now). And if you’re a regular reader of this blog, you’ll know that I’m a fan of his work. His diagrams and storytelling ability were a big inspiration for me when I was in architecture school.

The concept behind the project was to create a new hybrid building typology, one that is a cross between the typical European perimeter block building and the North American skyscraper. And the result is pretty wild.

Here’s a video in case you aren’t familiar with the project. Click here if you can’t see it below.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0JbTbOm_iQ?rel=0&w=560&h=315]

I think it’s a really exciting project. What are your thoughts?