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Keeping up with the news.
Feb. 13th, 2012 09:23 am| Last Thursday there was a fire at one of the most iconic, at least in my opinion since my school commute for many years passed right in front of it, places in Marseille - Le Corbusier. Also known as La Maison du Fada or officially La Cité Radieuse. Obviously it's a monumental piece of art that is still lived in, actually you have to be rather well off to be able to afford a flat there, and there really is something about the building and surrounding area, especially when you learn a bit about its history and how at the time it was built it was standing in a middle of a field. The genius of the work was tested on Thursday though, the fire started on Thursday afternoon and wasn't officially declared as stopped till Friday night. The structure is really complex inside, each flat is on two levels spanning the whole width of the building and flats are structured so that they "fit" one into the other. And then obviously most of the building has been kept as close to the original as opposite therefore there is a lot of wood, shafts and 70s design things. Overall what started as a fire in a single apartment required for everyone to be evacuated and 200 firefighters (marins-pompiers and not sapeurs-pompiers because it's actually the army who takes care of that in Marseille) and 50 firetrucks had to be there at the height of the battle. You can read the whole story here. Right now people still can't go back into their flats because of an issue with the heating system hasn't been resolved but otherwise it looks like everything is fine and no real structural damage was caused to the building. That's rather good, I think it's rather important trying to keep these little bits of history alive. And here is what Le Corbusier looked like back in the summer... |
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