Brutalism as a Bidirectional Reading Experience_The Unité d’Habitation

The architecture of the 20th century developed both its stylistic appearance and its theoretical basis from the multi-layered influences of industrialization. The modern fascination with new materials and functionalism extended as far as brutalism, which, by deliberately exposing the constructive structure, communicated the architectural elements and the inner spatial structure to the outside. Le Corbusier addressed his stance on the readability of architectural aesthetics from the constructive function and formulated utopian urban concepts. The machine for living is a modern idea first concretized and implemented in the brutalist era. Although it was designed as a utopia, it initially provided in the post-war modern context as an independent urban planning basis for the housing shortage in destroyed Europe, which is why the Unité d’Habitation was not only built several times between 1947 and 1967 in France but also for the Interbau exhibition in Germany in 1957. The interlocked maisonette apartments, which enclose the corridor as slender slabs, fill almost the entire structure as a modular system. The main structure and secondary structures make the spatial unfolding visible from the outside, which is why the brutalist style ensures material savings or functionality and, above all, use-related and theoretical communication as a bidirectional reading experience.