Renovation and Restructuring the Cité de Refuge by Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret. Preserving the Dual Functional and Architectural Identity of the Masterpiece

Abstract

The Cité de Refuge, for the Salvation Army, was built in Paris by Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret, in 1933. For Le Corbusier, it represented a formal, technical and mainly social architectural manifesto, as part of his idea of new society published in La Ville Radieuse, in 1935. Seventy years after, the building is deeply transformed because the everyday use is inadequate for the contemporary community standards for the reception of homeless and current climate standards. The challenge of the last restoration campaign (2007–2015) was to reconcile the current demanding standards while maintaining and upgrading the architectural qualities of the building.