Marseille has a special place for art and design: Appartement 50 in the Cité Radieuse, a building designed by Le Corbusier. Until 15 August, the designers Marie & Alexandre are exhibiting the results of their research.
In 1947, when Le Corbusier was asked by Raoul Dautry, the Minister for Town Planning and Reconstruction, to design an experimental building in the post-war context, he chose the area around Marseille. It was there, on the Boulevard Michelet in the elegant Prado district, that the Unité d’Habitation de Marseille, also known as the Cité Radieuse because of its double exposure to the sun, was inaugurated in the autumn of 1952: a Brutalist concrete building comprising 337 apartments of various sizes and community facilities that perfectly embodied the Swiss architect’s architectural and urban principles.
After initial criticism, the Cité Radieuse was declared a Monument Historique in 1995 and a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2016. In the early 2000s, Jean-Marc Drut and Patrick Blauwart, collectors and design enthusiasts, bought apartment 50 in the building and restored it to its original state. The space has been open to the public since 2008 and has hosted installations by designers such as Jasper Morrison (2008), Ronan & Erwan Bouroullec (2010), Konstantin Grcic (2013), Pierre Charpin (2013), ECAL (the Lausanne design school, 2014), Alessandro Medini (2016).
After a long break, the exhibition cycle resumes with Marie & Alexandre, who were invited to design a set for the apartment in collaboration with the Signé gallery in Paris. Between the works created for the occasion and those already presented, Marie Cornil and Alexandre Willaume have designed an installation that covers the entire space, shedding new light on its structural complexity and making a visit to this monument even more attractive.
The exhibition will then move to the gallery’s Paris location, where it will be presented during Paris Design Week from 5 September 2024.
