Editing Le Corbusier (section)

== League of Nations Competition and Pessac Housing Project (1926–1930) ==

Thanks to his passionate articles in L'Esprit Nouveau, his participation in the 1925 Decorative Arts Exposition and the conferences he gave on the new spirit of architecture, Le Corbusier had become well known in the architectural world, though he had only built residences for wealthy clients. In 1926, he entered the competition for the construction of a headquarters for the [[League of Nations]] in Geneva with a plan for an innovative lakeside complex of modernist white concrete office buildings and meeting halls. There were 337 projects in competition. It appeared that the Corbusier's project was the first choice of the architectural jury, but after much behind-the-scenes manoeuvring, the jury declared it was unable to pick a single winner, and the project was given instead to the top five architects, who were all neoclassicists. Le Corbusier was not discouraged; he presented his plans to the public in articles and lectures to show the opportunity that the League of Nations had missed.{{Sfn|Journel|2015|page=116}}

[[File:Cité Frugès, Pessac 03.jpg|280px|thumb|Low-cost housing units built by Le Corbusier in the [[Cité Frugès de Pessac|Cité Frugès]] in [[Pessac]] (1926)]]

=== The ''Cité Frugès'' ===

{{Main|Cité Frugès de Pessac}}
In 1926, Le Corbusier received the opportunity he had been looking for; he was commissioned by a Bordeaux industrialist, Henry Frugès, a fervent admirer of his ideas on urban planning, to build a complex of worker housing, the [[Cité Frugès de Pessac|Cité Frugès]], at [[Pessac]], a suburb of [[Bordeaux]]. Le Corbusier described Pessac as "A little like a Balzac novel", a chance to create a whole community for living and working. The Fruges quarter became his first laboratory for residential housing; a series of rectangular blocks composed of modular housing units located in a garden setting. Like the unit displayed at the 1925 Exposition, each housing unit had its own small terrace. The earlier villas he constructed all had white exterior walls, but for Pessac, at the request of his clients, he added colour; panels of brown, yellow and jade green, coordinated by Le Corbusier. Originally planned to have some two hundred units, it finally contained about fifty to seventy housing units, in eight buildings. Pessac became the model on a small scale for his later and much larger Cité Radieuse projects.<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1981/03/15/arts/architecture-view-le-corbusier-s-housing-project-flexible-enough-endure-ada.html|title=Architecture View; Le Corbusier's Housing Project-Flexible Enough to Endure; by Ada Louise Huxtable|date=15 March 1981|work=The New York Times}}</ref>