ABSTRACT
This introduction provides an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book focuses on the reconstruction of the town of Saint-Die, which was never actually materialized, and the Marseille Housing Block, built on Boulevard Michelet. These projects were paradigmatic: for while Le Corbusier considered Saint-Die to be a prototype of a modern town, he saw the Marseille Housing Block as a prototype of his collective residential buildings. The book establishes a comparison between the Saint-Die civic centre and the rooftop of the Marseille Housing Unit. It focuses on the characteristics that remain unchanged in each project, from the first to the last drawing. The book analyses the compositional persistence of the city civic centres and the rooftop-terraces of the housing units pertaining to Le Corbusier's projects from the period immediately following World War II.
