60 years since the laying of the foundation stone of the Firminy housing estate

From 21 to 19 September 2025, discover the exhibition retracing the 60 years of the building in the foyer-bar of the Maison de la Culture, Firminy.

On 21 May 1965, Le Corbusier laid the foundation stone for the Unité d’Habitation de Firminy.

Conceived as a 130-metre high ‘vertical city’, it combines individual housing and community facilities. This last of five units built worldwide was completed after the architect’s death by his collaborator André Wogenscky.

To mark its sixtieth anniversary, an exhibition looks back at this milestone in the history of both the project and the district.

The exhibition, organised by the Association of Le Corbusier Sites inhabitants in partnership with the Site Le Corbusier team, features a selection of archive material: plans, photographs, correspondence, press extracts, 8 mm films and a reproduction of the wooden sculpture that adorns the façade.

These documents, drawn in particular from the collections of the City of Firminy, the Le Corbusier Foundation and the Claudius-Petit family, trace the modern ambitions of the architecture of the 1960s and the human history of the district.