Unité d'Habitation Exterieur XVIII
Unité d'Habitation Exterieur XVIII
60 x 40cm
2020
acrylic on panel
The Unité d'Habitation (la cité radieuse) is a housing estate designed by Le Corbusier together with architect and painter Nadir Afonso. This residential housing is an impressive building to look at. It is constructed in béton brut, rough-cast concrete. This building is enormous, standing loose from the ground on pillars. Its walls are covered with wall reliefs showing the 'Modulor', which Le Corbusier formulated as a scale of proportions derived from the height of a man sitting, standing and standing with his arm raised. He used it as a system to set out this and other buildings.
For this series I used the concrete colour of the exterior of the building and the dark shadows from the Modulor reliefs on the walls seen when walking past the building.