The Unite d'Habitation at Marseilles (1945-1952) is a key building of the twentieth century and a seminal work in Le Corbusier's oeuvre. A precursor of buildings in Nantes, Berlin, Briey-en-Foret and Firminy, it established, in built form, Le Corbusier's ideas of public housing that had existed only on paper for more than twenty-five years. David Jenkins argues that the Marseilles Unite stands out as a powerful and convincing testament of Le Corbusier's fundamental humanism and his faith in the principles of the Ville Radieuse and the Brutalist medium of rough cast concrete which in other, less able hands, have since been called into question.
'Architecture In Detail' is a superbly photographed and technically informative series of monographs which embraces a broad spectrum of internationally renowned buildings, drawn predominantly from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Each sixty-page volume contains a lucid text by a respected author; a sequence of large-format, high-quality colour and black and white photographs; a comprehensive set of technical drawings and working details; and a complete bibliography and chronology, thus making these books the definitive work on the subject. They are essential purchases for enthusiasts, practitioners and students alike.
