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Quartiers Modernes Frugès is a housing development located in Pessac. It was designed by noted architect Le Corbusier as both an architect and a town planner. It contained some 70 housing units.
The building was built as experimental housing for workers. Le Corbusier took into account prevailing social and economic factors, and was determined to build the plan to provide people with low-cost, predetermined, homogeneous cubist structures.
The project originated in 1920 with 10 houses built at Lege, near Pessac, for the father of Henry Fruges. Following this initial phase, the project was extended to 200 houses. Only a quarter of this number were built by 1926.
The layout consists of a terrace of about 8 three storey houses with roof gardens. Behind them is a terrace of houses connected to each other with a concrete arch which provides a sheltered garden. In the middle of the development are the interlocking houses.
Quartiers Modernes Frugès is on of 17 sites described as the UNESCO World Heritage Site 'The Architectural Work of Le Corbusier'.
References:Towering 52 meters above the sea, Bengtskär lighthouse is the tallest one in Scandinavia. The building started in in 1905 after the shipwreck of S/S Helsingfors and was completed in 1906. The lighthouse was designed by architect Florentin Granholm. On December a special petrol lantern, designed and built in Paris, was brought to Bengtskär and installed atop the tower.
German fleet bombarded Bengstkär in the First World War in 1914. Since the Gulf of Finland was heavily mined, it was not until 1919 that the surrounding seas were declared safe for shipping, that the light was lit again.
After the war the military value of Bengtskär increased as part of the defence system of independent Finland. In Second World War (1941) Soviet Union made a suprise attack to island. After a bloody battle, the small Finnish garrison emerged victorious. Intermittent repairs to the facility continued during the post-war period.