Ville Radieuse

Ville radieuse (French pronunciation: [vil ʁaˈdjøːz]; lit. 'Radiant City') was an unrealised urban design project designed by the French-Swiss architect Le Corbusier in 1930. It constitutes one of the most influential and controversial urban design doctrines of European modernism.^[1]

Although Le Corbusier had exhibited his ideas for the ideal city, the Ville contemporaine, in the 1920s, during contact with international planners he began work on the Ville Radieuse. In 1930 he had become an active member of the syndicalist movement and proposed the Ville radieuse as a blueprint of social reform.

The principles of the Ville radieuse were incorporated into his later publication, the Athens Charter published in 1933.

His utopian ideal formed the basis of a number of urban plans during the 1930s and 1940s culminating in the design and construction of the first Unité d'habitation in Marseille in 1952.