Jean-Louis Schoellkopf

Firminy, l'Unité d'Habitation Le Corbusier . 1987

Jean-Louis Schoellkopf . photos: © Jean-Louis Schoellkopf

About his "unités d'habitation", le Corbusier was talking of machines (machnes à habiter), in reference to standardization in building and in the industrial processes.
He strongly imposed a way of living.
I wondered what could be the "strategies" set up by the inhabitants against such an injunction.
These strtegies have to be different if you own the apartment or not.
I chose to work in two units: Firminy (HLM) and la Cité Radieuse in Marseilles (co-ownership).
The procedure was very precise:
I stood, back on the plate-glass window, the view, frontal, included the stairs, the three walls and part of the wall of the mezzanine.
In some apartments the stairs hide, walls disappear, the ceiling extends...There is no more mezzanine.
Jean-Louis Schoellkopf