Pessac - Life in a Laboratory

For the architect Charles-Edouard Jeanneret, who called himself Le Corbusier, the Pessac housing complex was the first opportunity to design architecture for "entirely normal" people. He had already drafted cities for up to three million inhabitants, but his actual clients were all wealthy citizens. One of these was Henry Frugès, for whom he had built a private home and from whom he was subsequently awarded a contract to construct a housing complex for the workers at his sugar factory near Bordeaux. The fifty-one houses, built between 1925 and 1929, are still inhabited today, with differing levels of respect shown...