The sun-baked hills around Roquebrune Cap Martin are one suburban super-village, part of a line of habitation that runs from Marseilles to Monaco. The Roq was a world apart from Swiss architect, Le Corbusier's concrete modernist superstructure of Unité d’Habitation in Marseilles; a place for quiet contemplation and the occasional spot of nude bathing. And it was here, suitably, that Le Corbusier built what became known as the Unité de Camping.
In 1949, the architect drew up plans for the Roq, a series of vacation houses comprising of two-storey vaulted structures arranged in a broken grid of open courtyards. Then, Le Corbusier’s modest log cabin was built in 1952, and originally intended as a birthday present for his wife Yvonne Gallis, a Monégasque model.
He adored the stark cabin so much, with its wooden walls decorated with bold murals and bright panels of colour, that Le Corbusier later extended the concept by building a tiny one-man studio nearby. It was here that he laboured over the search for the perfect human scale – the Modulor – and the hut has subsequently become a place of architectural pilgrimage, a showcase for a kind of anti-consumerist lifestyle.
In 1957, just eight years before his final, fatal swim in the sea, Le Corbusier built Rob, an almost rustic set of camping units close to his favourite café. Named after le patron, Roberto Rebutato, and nicknamed the Unité de Camping after his Marseilles project, it epitomises Le Corbusier’s modular design approach. The units have now been repainted similar to the primary coloured ‘cells’ that make up the real Unité’s façade. Rob is rudimentary, even by camping standards. The five two-storey units, all behind one grid façade punched with five square windows, form a humble addition to the local landscape.
While the Rob scheme was never as worked up as Corbusier’s own cabin, which served as an experimental living space and laboratory for new ideas, furniture and materials, the simple design stands in marked contrast to the vast structure that had taken shape down the coast at Marseilles. Le Corbusier is often accused of creating architecture that was wilfully inhuman, but his buildings at Roquebrune Cap Martin show him at his most playful, the great architect abandoning city-scouring masterplans in search of the simple life.
The architect's personal log cabin served as an experimental living space where he could try out new ideas Le Corbusier's cabin and his chalets all have simple, functional interiors
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