19 March 2012

Le Corbusier slept here...


 ... well, probably not, but you can. The Hotel Le Corbusier is situated in a residential area of Marseille, and looks pretty interesting. Not luxurious, and I would issue a cement-overload alert here, but it looks like there is a lot of diversity and individual personality in the rooms, although the hotel itself looks to be enormous, which makes sense, as it was conceived as a self-contained village – la Cité Radieuse, or radiant city.

From the website, Sejours et Loisirs:
"The Corbusier hotel opens its doors onto one man’s utopia become reality: the Radiant City of Marseille by Corbusier, a vessel of colours, a perfect parallelepiped perched on its strange pillars. Neither the facades nor the roof covered with the most unusual works of art have been left to chance, everything is the fruit of the 30-year long imaginative creation of a man passionately interested in architecture, art and humanity. The property, listed as a historical building, is the archetype of a town. The apartments have been designed to look like villas, the corridors like streets and a central thoroughfare goes through the heart of the third level where the Hotel and winter garden can also be found. The miniature town has its own mini-swimming pool, open-air theatre, vast gymnasium, tennis court and a cinema."

It would be fun to hunt down and decipher the pictograms on plinths and surfaces, some worn enough to resemble ancient hieroglyphs. Check out google images for more photos GF


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