By Lisette Schumacher
100 x 70 cm, 2019
Acrylic on panel

From the series Unité d'Habitation de Marseille

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. Apart from that this building is enormous, standing loose from the ground on pillars. Its walls are covered with meticulous wall reliefs showing the 'Modulor', which Le Corbusier formulated as a scale of proportions derived from the height of a man with his arm raised. He used it as a system to set out this and other buildings. For this series Lisette used the concrete colour of the exterior of the building and the dark shadows from the reliefs on the walls seen when walking past the building.