the year 2015

The sun-baked hills around Roquebrune Cap Martin are one suburban super-village, part of a line of habitation that runs from Marseilles to Monaco. The Roq was a world apart from Swiss architect, Le Corbusier's concrete modernist superstructure of Unité d'Habitation in Marseilles; a place for quiet contemplation and the occasional spot of nude bathing. And it was here, suitably, that Le Corbusier built what became known as the Unité de Camping. In 1949, the architect drew up plans for the Roq, a series of vacation houses comprising of two-storey vaulted structures arranged in a broken grid of open courtyards. Then, Le Corbusier's modest log cabin was built in 1952, and originally intended as a birthday present for his wife Yvonne Gallis, a Monégasque model. He adored the stark cabin so much, with its wooden walls decorated with bold murals and bright panels of colour, that Le Corbusier later extended the concept by building a tiny one-man studio nearby. It was here that he laboured over the search for the perfect human scale the Modulor, and the hut has subsequently become a place of architectural pilgrimage, a showcase for a kind of anti-consumerist lifestyle.