Lastly, we visited Le Corbuiser’s Cité radieuse Marseille in the 8th arrondissement, an apartment block designed by Le Corbusier post-WW2. It was not just his way of helping solve the housing crisis at that time as soldiers returned to a devastated city, but expressed his vision for happy, communal living. Now again, you may think an architectural tour might be a drag for children, but this is a building which dazzles with sci-fi inventiveness. You can have a tour and see inside an apartment in its original form, which is all designed around maximum lights, ingenious use of storage and space, and little touches like a kitchen hatch opening out onto the corridor where people could deliver goods. Because the other thing here is that every third floor was a shopping ‘street’, a stretch or amenities and stores where you could buy shopping and socialise.
