Stam that was to have formed a larger part of a Functional City design. CIAM 4 was the first congress that the influential MARS Group from England was represented. In 1935 MARS member Berthold Lubetkin and his practice, the Tecton Group completed Highpoint in Highgate, London. The project comprised 56 dwellings grouped together as two crosses on plan, eight dwellings per arm. Each dwelling is linked to a central service core but is separated from its neighbour by a balcony - a design feature that virtually eliminated noise transfer between dwellings. In 1937 with the fall of the Second Spanish Republic, Sert suggested that England and the United States may be the best place to focus CIAM's activities. Post-war influence The Athens Charter had a huge impact on planning thought after World War II. However, its influence was more complicated because in the 1950s CIAM attempted to replace the Functional City described in the Charter with a different Charter of Habitat. France In 1946 Le Corbusier received a commission for projects in La Rochelle and St Dié. The urban plan allowed him to experiment with urban monumentality that had been somewhat underplayed in the Charter, but as part of the project he proposed eight Unité d'Habitation flanked by a civic centre. Although these proposals were unbuilt, he had more success in Marseilles where an initial study for three Unités resulted in one being built. In line with the Charter, the Unité was a north-south orientated block eighteen storeys high set in parkland. There is a public 'street' on levels 7 and 8 that provides various shops, offices and a hotel. On the roof there is a nursery school, a running track and a pool. It opened in 1952 but had begun to influence architects even before it was complete. United Kingdom The 1949 Housing Act in England paved the way for Local Authorities to provide a balance of housing types for a range of communities, not just the working class. In the socialist post-war atmosphere, architectural writer J M Richards praised Le Corbusier's Unité for "putting clean and healthy housing in a parkland setting". Between 1952 and 1958 London County Council built the Alton East and Alton West high-rise blocks in Roehampton. Alton East comprised 744 dwellings within mainly 10-storey blocks and Alton West was 1867 dwellings in 5-, 6- and 12-storey blocks. Both projects are set within parkland and