The Kitchen of the Cité Radieuse

The Kitchen of the Cité Radieuse

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  • 1950 Cuisine parCh. Perriand

    Prototype I réalisé à titre d’étude pour l’unité d’habitation de Marseille de Le Corbusier. Vue de la salle de séjour sur la cuisine. Le meuble bar soustrait à la vue, le désordre éventuel des plans de travail.

    © Charlotte Perriand
  • 1958, Maison du Sahara, au salon des Arts Ménagers, étudiée pour les pétroliers.

    Charlotte Perriand Equipement - J. Prouvé, Lagneay Weill Kowalsky architectes.
    Schéma d’un type de cabine de salle de séjour, la position centrale du bloc buanderie - cuisine, détaché des murs met directement en communication ces 2 fonctions, ce qui permet de passer aisément d’un travail à l’autre - des écrans les abstraient à la vue des convives.
    Vue de l’organisation de la cuisine sur la salle de séjour.

    © Charlotte Perriand

Designed as a “small laboratory” Charlotte Perriand and Le Corbusier’s kitchen was created to simplify routine domestic tasks. As one of the iconic examples of post-war modern equipment, it echoes considerations that were already present during the 1920s and 1930s, in particular with the Frankfurt kitchen (Frankfurter Küche) designed in 1926 by the Austrian architect, Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky and the Cubex by Louis-Herman de Koninck (1931).

  • Arc 1800

    Cellule de quatre lits de 30m2 devenue un modèle dans la profession.
    Vue du bar sur le séjour.

    © Charlotte Perriand
  • Arc 2000

    Construction de studios jumelés pour une formule club-hôtel.
    Vue sur le bar et le bloc de cuisson.

    © Charlotte Perriand

Considered the heart of the family home, the kitchen in the Marseille Unité d’Habitation is a convivial space, half-open to the living areas. The kitchen’s plan is a square of 4.80 m, allowing all the equipment to be within reach to everyone simply by pivoting. Placed close to the building’s large windows, it benefits from natural light. While a bar cabinet facilitates the passing of dishes, sliding doors mean that any mess on worktables can be hidden, to maintain the apartment’s harmony. The equipment of this kitchen has become one with the concrete structure of the Habitation and include, amongst others: an electric cooker and an oven, a double sink, one of which is an automatic refuse chute, a refrigerating cabinet, two large tables covered in metal around the sink, cupboards and units for storing utensils, and finally a system that was still quite rare in France at the time: a vapour extraction hood connected to the building’s general ventilation. While it allowed considerable saving of space, the kitchen of the Marseille Unité d’Habitation is a major record of the democratization of domestic comfort.