#hexacube

505. Georges Candilis & Anja Blomstedt /// Hexacube /// Les Carrats, Port Leucate, France /// 1968-75

Georges Candilis was born in Baku, Azerbaijan, and grew up in Athens, Greece, where he studied architecture and met great French architect Le Corbusier in the early 30s. He became one of his closest workshop collaborator and worked on the construction of La Cité Radieuse, Le Corbusier’s masterpiece in Marseille, developing some architectural principles like planned urbanism and « habitat au plus grand nombre » as logic responses to the growth and the changes of individual housing. Founding member of the Team X (or Team Ten), he then specialized with his partners Alexis Josic and Shadrach Woods in large scale projects for affordable and inclusive housing in the 50s like the Mirail in Toulouse or The Free University in Berlin, as well as projects in Casablanca. His rational and democratic approach of architecture led him to design a modular plastic camping unit known as « Hexacube » and a whole holiday resort in Port-Leucate, Les Carrats, with Finnish interior designer Anja Blomstedt (who also worked with Charlotte Perriand at the time). They had an idea of cheap and very simple furniture that are easy to disassemble and transport, consisting of simple pieces of solid wood or plywood held in place with aluminium angle brackets. The pieces were made and assembled by the Sentou workshops, and only a few hundred pieces of this rare edition remain nowadays.

Hexacube by Candilis - utopic house designed in France in the 70′s