Most of what I saw of him feels cold and failed. That said the "cite radieuse", when inside, felt cozy, original and well built (from walls, orientation thus lighting, heating). People living there said they were very pleased.
Completely impractical since every developer will choose the standard closed in, windowless and unadorned hallway because it is the cheaper option.
If you search for floorplans of it, it looks like there are also interior corridors but I think every apartment has access to one of those wide corridors. I'm not sure what the point of having both interior and exterior corridors is, I would think it would be better to get rid of the interior corridor and give the extra space to the exterior one.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit%C3%A9_d%27habitation#La_C...
Edit: Well this is disappointing. After further research, it looks like that corridor is just the main one and the rest of the floor have dark, internal corridors and then enclosed balconies. What a missed opportunity, imagine a whole building full of corridors like the ones in the image, if you're going to build two story apartments then why not do it that way?
That's one theory I've heard a few times, it served as a basis for urban renewal in the 60s but dumb down on every level to the point of being rapidly unliveable (cue the movies about housing project blues that came soon after)
Urban renewal did not fail because it was done cheaply, or dumbed down (which it was). It failed because it was fundamentally the wrong approach to city building.
We're still living with the consequences. Our current built environment is modernist; mediated by technology, planned, bureaucratic.
It's due time Le Corbusier is getting his comeuppance. It took a long long time. The first criticism were in the 70s, but postmodernism could not get beyond pageantry. And when I was in college 20 years ago, modernism was still venerated in the architecture departments, because the architect-as-god remained so appealing (btw Ayn Rand was similarly infatuated, it's an odd quirk of history how both communism and libertarians found common ground in this one domain). It's slowly fading. I think the dyke is going to break, and we'll put Le Corbusier where he belongs. A hugely influential misanthrope, who made categorically bad architecture.
(also really sad, because early in his career, Le Cobusier's single family homes were really quite appealing).
https://brill.com/view/journals/fasc/6/2/article-p196_196.xm...
Urban renewal wasn't necessarily the wrong solution in itself.
The 18th and 19th centuries weren't necessarily any better at humane building. In the UK postwar worker housing stock was terrible - outside toilets, little or no insulation, no central heating, and often poorly built.
So blocks were a solution of sorts. But they usually were poorly built and unimaginatively designed, optimised for low cost, but with no practical understanding of community or community spaces.
A typical UK block has some decorative grass around it, but that's it. There's no common space, no common facilities, and no colour or texture.
Later renovations which add at least some of the above are more popular and have fewer social problems.
Just do deviate a little from LC in particular. But both communism and fascism are the political realizations of modernism, in that they only can function through the mediation of high technology.
In communism, equity is achieved through perfect bureaucracy; the system of production and wealth reallocation being a well-oiled machine, perfectly transparent and predictably manipulated. It is in communism, that humans completely submit to the machine the most.
In fascism, dominion is achieved through incessant violent action. Technology is the necessary lever to maintain dominance over the enemy. It is in fascism that humans submit to their leader, exhilarated by their shared power through technology (Tanks! Bombs! Nuclear Reactors!)
Since no technology is perfectly reliable, or technological dominion is never guaranteed, both are doomed to fail.
In this respect the gradually growing criticisms of modernism and the fraying of the postwar political order go hand-in-hand. A criticism of a one-size-fits-all lifestyle equally applies across the fascist/communist spectrum, and the "Californian ideology" that SV represented drove a stake into it by standing up for the individual, albeit in an amoral, Randian sense: cool toys for those who could afford them, digital sharecropping for the rest. The highly provisioned, toy-like offices of Google etc follow from that premise.
> the gradually growing criticisms of modernism and the fraying of the postwar political order go hand-in-hand
fwiw - I think the growing criticism of modernism are a good thing. The alternative, a more humanistic attitude to life and liberty (corny I know), and a more organic model of political organization seem preferable.
I also agree that the amoral SV-ethos was wrong, because of the elitism you point out.
That said I'm not pro big-structures[0], I understand it spoils the area too much. Near my town, an ex no-go zone has been replaced by smaller buildings, that was enough to regrow a peacefulness that left for 30 years. It's walkable, the woods nearby are walkable, almost shocking.
[0] even though, I still love them for some reasons
But "big apartment building" only works well in a big thriving city, within its existing fabric. Not as in, let's raze the city, and put a big building in this new empty space. And I think Le Corbusier was explicitly about the latter.
In the US all units in a new residential building with an elevator must be adaptable for accessibility. If each individual apartment was two floors then each would need accommodation for an elevator or staircase lift.