Cité Frugès de Pessac

The Cité Frugès de Pessac (in English: Frugès Estate of Pessac), or Les Quartiers Modernes Frugès[1] (in English: the modern Frugès quarters), is a housing development located in Pessac, a suburb of Bordeaux, France. It was commissioned by the industrialist Henri Frugès in 1924 as worker housing and designed by architects Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret, who were responsible for the development's masterplan and individual buildings.[1][2] It was intended as a testing ground for the ideas Le Corbusier had expressed in his 1922 manifesto Vers une Architecture and was his first attempt designing low-cost, mass-produced collective housing. Drawings of some of the buildings were subsequently included in the second edition of the text.[3]

Cité Frugès de Pessac
Alternative namesQuartiers Modernes Frugès
General information
TypeSingle-family house to sixplex
Architectural styleInternational style
LocationPessac, Bordeaux, France
Address4 Rue le Corbusier, 33600 Pessac, France
Construction started1924
Construction stopped1926
ClientHenri Frugès
OwnerMostly private owners
Technical details
Structural systemreinforced concrete frame with CMU infill
Design and construction
ArchitectLe Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret
DesignationsUNESCO World Heritage Site, monument historique
Other information
Number of units51 built, 135 planned
References
Official nameCité Frugès de Pessac
CriteriaCultural: i, ii, vi
Reference1321-003
Inscription2016 (40th Session)
Area2,179 ha
Buffer zone26,475 ha

The Cité was planned to contain 135 housing units in four sections, but only two sections (consisting of 51 units)[3] were realized due to financial difficulties. By the time they were completed, the houses were three to four times more expensive than envisioned and about twice as expensive as comparable houses on the market.[4] The workers refused to move in, forcing Frugès to sell the individual houses in the same year after a failed attempt to sell the entire estate.[5] Over the next decades, the houses were heavily modified by their inhabitants, including the addition of pitched roofs and decoration, the resizing of windows, and the enclosure of patios.[5]

On December 18, 1980, No. 3 Rue des Arcades was listed as a French monument historique.[3] The whole complex was subsequently designated a French Zone de Protection du Patrimoine Architectural Urbain (in English, a Protected Zone of Urban Architectural Heritage).[3] In 2016, the district was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site as part of The Architectural Work of Le Corbusier, along with 16 other projects.[6]

History

Henri Frugès, a French wine, sugar, and carpet industrialist[3] interested in modern architecture, commissioned the project from Le Corbusier in 1924[2] to house employees of his factory. Having read Le Corbusier's 1922 manifesto Toward an Architecture,[2] Frugès wanted Pessac to serve as a testing ground for Le Corbusier's theories of standardization, efficiency, and machine production, saying "extreme as the consequences may be--Pessac should be a laboratory".[7] Frugès chose the site because it was surrounded by forests and previously unbuilt, as well as for its proximity to the factories where its residents would be employed, the railroad, and a tuberculosis hospital.[2][7] The complex's forest location is an influence of the Garden City movement, which held natural landscapes were important for the health and well-being of urban residents.[7]

In 1942, one of the houses was destroyed in a World War II bombing targeting the nearby railroad.[3]

In 1983, the city of Pessac bought one of the private houses, restored it, and opened it for tours.[2] Since then, the development has become increasingly desirable for residents and visited by architectural tourists,[8] though some houses remain in a state of disrepair.

Design

Le Corbusier took into account prevailing social and economic factors, and was determined to build the plan to provide people with low-cost, predetermined, homogeneous cubist structures.

The project originated in 1920 with 10 houses built at Lege, near Pessac, for the father of Henri Frugès, a Bordeaux industrialist and lover of modern architecture.[9] Following this initial phase, the project was extended to 200 houses. Only a quarter of this number were built by 1926. L-C painted panels of brown, blue, yellow and jade green in response to the clients request for "decoration".[10]

The layout consists of:

A terrace of about 8 three storey houses with roof gardens. Behind them is a terrace of houses connected to each other with a concrete arch which provides a sheltered garden. In the middle of the development are the interlocking houses.[11]

Cellule System and Typology

Le Corbusier employed the cellule module to standardize the dwellings.[12] These cellules function as the basic unit of mass but do not have a predetermined programmatic function.[12] Three basic units are employed throughout: a five-by-five meter 1 cellule, a five-by-two-and-a-half meter 1/2 cellule, and a two-and-a-half-by-two-and-a-half 1/4 cellule.[12] Seven other units for stairs, entrances, and roofs are also used.[12] Once functional needs are considered, cellules were combined into final massings.[12] Additional geometric forms were then added to further differentiate each housing type.[12] These combinations were created with an explicit attention towards making them easy for assembly-line mass production and aesthetically reflect the logic of production.[12]

The complex contains five distinct housing types of one to six units named after a physical characteristic: the two-story quinconces (staggered), zig-zag (Z-formation), arcade, and isolé (free-standing) and the three-story gratte-ciel (skyscraper).[2][12] There is also a block of six attached houses.[3][4] A system of proportion based on the cellule and window sizes dictate the relationship between the types.[12] While the interiors differ, they are all articulated as a single vertical building with different combinations of forms.[12] Programmatically, the houses contain an entrance space, a kitchen, a living space, a sleeping area, and service space.[12]

Construction

Construction began on the complex in 1924 and ended in 1926. Only 51 (sections C and D) of the 135 planned units were completed. Almost immediately, construction was beset by problems, partially the result of incomplete architectural designs.[4] When they were sold, units originally envisioned as affordable to the working-class were valued between 51,300 (for attached houses No. 49-54) and 74,100 francs (for single-family house No. 37), three to four times more expensive than planned.[4] Comparable houses were on the market for 30,000 to 35,000 francs.[4]

The Cement Gun and Contractor Problems

Near the end of 1924, M. Poncet, Frugès' Head of Buildings and construction manager for the Lège project, began preparing the Pessac site for building. By April 1925, construction had progressed on the concrete structure of the Zig-Zag houses and attached houses No. 49-54. They were using the newly-available cement gun to build infill wall panels, a reflection of Le Corbusier's desire to employ new technologies. During site visits to both projects on April 7, 1925, Le Corbusier was dissatisfied with the quality of work, calling it an "extremely precarious and dangerous situation"[3] (for instance, the foundation of a dormitory at Lège had collapsed and residents had to be evacuated[4]). He called for a work stoppage and Poncet's replacement with Parisian builder Georges Summer, with whom he had previously worked on the Pavillon de L'Espirit Nouveau. By May, after some reticence from Frugès, a team from Summer's studio consisting of a foreman and eight craftsmen had restarted work on the project, at much higher wages. This, along with issues creating hollow walls with even thicknesses, meant the use of CMU-block infill, laid by hand, was necessary to achieve the desired "high-precision, machine-made look."[3] Gunnite spray was only employed for facing curved walls and other minor details.[4]

Custom Prefabricated Components

In keeping with the desire to mass-produce the entire house, Le Corbusier wanted to work with mass-produced elements. For the window frames, he opted for custom-designed window frames manufactured by Decourt and Company, instead of using designs already available in Bordeaux. The need to quickly produce these custom components raised costs "substantially."[4] By 1927, the windows were leaking due to poor drainage on the sill.[4]

Site Planning Issues

In October of 1925, Frugès sent a letter to Le Corbusier noting one of the gratte-ciels was sitting on the planned route of a provincial road and suggesting density cuts to accommodate the municipality.[3] At the same time, it became clear that the project had not respected laws governing the provision of public services and would not win governmental approval.[4]

Critical Reception

The scheme was generally panned by critics at the time.[5] In 1929, architectural historian Henry-Russell Hitchcock called it a "serious disappointment" with "uncomfortable" interiors.[1] Others characterized it as "a Sultan's district, a harem, and ... as a Moroccan settlement."[13]

In 1969, the architect Philippe Boudon published a post-occupancy assessment of the project titled Pessac de Le Corbusier: 1927-1967, Étude Socio-Architecturale (published in English in 1972 as Lived-In Architecture: Le Corbusier's Pessac Revisited) detailing how residents had adapted the structures to fit their lives since its completion. He said the houses helped residents realize what they needed and allowed them to satisfy those needs,[1] though the book was broadly seen as critical of Pessac. In response to the radical changes documented within, Le Corbusier commented that "life is always right; it is the architect who is wrong."[5]

In 1981, the New York Times' architecture critic Ada Louis Huxtable said the development "continues to give something to the eye and the spirit that only buildings shaped and informed by a superior and caring eye and spirit can".[1] Many still consider it a failure of modern architecture's desire to house the masses, alongside Pruitt-Igoe in the United States.[1]

Further reading
  • Brian Brace Taylor. Le Corbusier et Pessac, vol. 1 and 2 (Paris: Fondation Le Corbusier, 1972)
  • Philippe Boudon and Gerald Onn. Lived-In Architecture: Le Corbusier's Pessac Revisited (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1972)
  • M. Ferrand, J.-P. Feugas, B. Le Roy, and J.-L. Veyret. Le Corbusier: Les Quartiers Modernes Frugès/The Quartiers Modernes Frugès (Basel: Birkhauser/Fondation Le Corbusier, 1998)

See also

References
  1. Architecture View - LE CORBUSIER'S HOUSING PROJECT- FLEXIBLE ENOUGH TO ENDURE - by Ada Louise Huxtable - NYTimes.com
  2. Helena (2015-01-27). "LA CITÉ FRUGÈS. A modern neighborhood for the working class". Architectural Visits. Retrieved 2022-04-05.
  3. Tim Benton, “Pessac and Lege revisited: Standards, dimensions, and failures.” In B. B. Taylor (ed.), Le Corbusier et Pessac (Paris: Fondation Le Corbusier, 1972). Accessible at https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/41787181.pdf
  4. Taylor, Brian Brace (2021-04-23). Le Corbusier at Pessac: Professional and Client Responsibilities. PubPub. ISBN 978-0-262-36788-2.
  5. ""Life is always right: it is the architect who is wrong" - Philip Steadman". philipsteadman.com. Retrieved 2022-04-06.
  6. "L'Œuvre architecturale de le Corbusier, une contribution exceptionnelle au Mouvement Moderne".
  7. "Le Corbusier's Cité Frugès: Lessons from a Modern Social Housing Neighborhood". ArchDaily. 2020-06-10. Retrieved 2022-04-05.
  8. "Le Corbusier's Cité Frugès housing now hosts fashionable apartments". Dezeen. 2016-07-26. Retrieved 2022-04-05.
  9. "Le Corbusier's cité Frugès, timelessly modern and back in fashion | Bordeaux Tourism & Conventions".
  10. Le Corbusier edited by Willy Boesiger, p.26.
  11. personal visit to Pessac in 1970s
  12. Hsu, Chia-Chang; Shih, Chih-Ming (May 2006). "A Typological Housing Design: The Case Study of Quartier Fruges in Pessac by Le Corbusier". Journal of Asian Architecture and Building Engineering. 5 (1): 75–82. doi:10.3130/jaabe.5.75. ISSN 1346-7581.
  13. Jencks, Charles (2021-04-23). Le Corbusier on the Tightrope of Functionalism. PubPub. ISBN 978-0-262-36788-2.

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