In November 1922, in the Urbanism stand in the Salon d'Automne, in Paris, Le Corbusier first introduces the Immeuble-villas project. It arises as a new collective housing type, including private spaces – 120 flats – and community spaces – warehouse, central kitchen, restaurant, launderette, running track, solariums and sports, game, study and party facilities. In the first volume of his Œuvre Complète, Le Corbusier points out that Immeuble-villas was sketched “onto the back of a restaurant menu”. As always, Le Corbusier relativizes the creative process, by reducing it into an inspiration moment. However, a research at the Archives of the Le Corbusier Foundation uncovered a large set of documents. The amount of documentation available about this project shows that the design process has been far more complex. Apparently, the origin of the Immeuble-villas project dates back to the contact Le Corbusier established in 1922 with an important real estate society that was interested in constructing luxury buildings in Paris, where “French good taste is combined with the American sense of comfort”: the Groupe de l’Habitation Franco-Américaine. Le Corbusier did not have at the time any mandate for collective housing in Paris. He had just opened his studio – l’Atelier Le Corbusier – together with his cousin Pierre Jeanneret, in number 29 bis of the rue d’Astorg, and apparently saw in this real estate society the image of the informed client. Although this order did not succeed – as the group was involved in a fraud, breach of trust and breach of company law process – Le Corbusier continued to partner with potential investors, to look for clients to its apartments, and, above all, to develop this original project in detail for several years. The aim of this paper is to re-establish the hitherto unknown internal argument of this project – which was never built but that is at the origin of modern thought about housing and that plays, even today, a key role in the worldwide architectural production.

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Arquitectura,Le Corbusier