‘To make something with nothing’: Le Corbusier's proposal for refugee housing—Les Constructions ‘Murondins’

Abstract

This paper discusses the complex political trajectory of Le Corbusier's little-known project for war refugees, Les Constructions ‘Murondins’, and examines how it embodies a significant transformation in both his social orientation and formal ideas during the 1930s and the Vichy period.In 1940, Le Corbusier and his partner Pierre Jeanneret designed the ‘Murondins’ scheme as a means to erect provisional housing and villages rapidly (including a school, club and youth centre). Le Corbusier proposed that these structures would be built by local youths using pisé (‘rammed earth’), tree trunks, branches and other readily available materials. Beyond housing those in need, he hoped that these new settlements would be the foundation of a new grassroots regional culture that would revitalise the French countryside. For the following two years, he actively promoted the ‘Murondins’ project to the Vichy government (unsuccessfully) as a means of mobilising rural youth; after France's liberation, he campaigned for it again as a solution for housing war victims. Nor did he abandon it in subsequent decades: in 1955, he proposed it to Abbé Pierre's Faim et Soif as a solution for sheltering the homeless; and in 1963, he offered it as a means of housing Algerian Muslims fleeing to France after the Algerian war.