A century ago, the father of modern architecture, Le Corbusier, was commissioned by a French industrialist to design some homes for factory workers near Bordeaux. The resulting development, Cité Frugès de Pessac, was much as one might expect: brightly hued blocks of pure modernism. The humble factory workers refused to move in.
Later residents of Pessac subverted Le Corbusier’s visionary geometry. They added rustic shutters, pitched roofs and gardens with picket fences, adorned with gaudy gnomes. Modernism can be beautiful, but we humans like to do things our own way.
