Situated on a hill in the countryside town of
Ronchamp, France,
Le Corbusier’s
Notre Dame du Haut chapel is a strange and beautiful anomaly in the history of characteristically
modern architecture, specifically the
International Style, of the
mid-twentieth century. Its organic, gestural
form, use of
abstract shapes, and incorporation of
color,
texture,
light, and
sound has strong ties to the
modern art of the period. Meanwhile, its personal, intimate
scale, so different from the
mechanized housing projects the
architect championed a few years earlier, suggests a desire to retreat from the harsh realities of a
modern world, and the destruction of
World War Two.
In his
housing projects, such as his
opus, the
1947 Unité d’Habitation in
Marseille, he designed the space to be as space and cost
efficient as possible, making the home into a “
machine for living.” His aim was to make an
architecture that was mass producible, and to render this
efficiency and
simplicity beautiful. Le Corbusier could look at an austere
concrete structure and see
aesthetic beauty. With a strict
social agenda and mechanized style in place, the
chapel at Ronchamp came as something of a shock to the architects of the time.
In
1950, the
parish of
Ronchamp,
France commissioned Le Corbusier to design a new Notre Dame en Haut chapel, after the previous chapel was lost in World War Two. That structure, too, was a replacement; the original chapel was destroyed in a lightning fire in
1910. The actual site, however, had been a popular destination for
pilgrims since the
13th century. The parish was small, with a population of 200, but on
holy days pilgrims numbering into the ten thousands would flood the chapel and the surrounding hill.
Unlike Le Corbusier’s previous structures, the chapel has an
organic feel, and responds to the
natural environment. This move is more in line with his original
purism philosophy in that it responds to
nature. The building itself is sloped to fit each of the four
horizons: a plain opposite hills and two valleys on the remaining sides.
The
texture of the surfaces also reflects the chapel’s natural environment. The chapel is made of rough sprayed
concrete, or
béton brut, covered by a layer of whitewashed plaster. Large wooden beams provide support for the walls and roof, and also form the benches within the chapel. Le Corbusier chose concrete not just for its
sculptural potential, but also because it was the most
practical material for constructing a building on a hill in a remote town, a truly
purist choice. The rough texture of the chapel provides a parallel to
abstract expressionism: as the
medium of the building, earth, is
honest and conspicuous, just as
modern painters focused on the
medium of their
canvases and
paint. In addition, the organic, natural materials of the chapel stand in sharp contrast to the
glass and
steel that show up in the earlier works of Le Corbusier and his
International Style colleagues.
The incorporation of the natural environment with the
composition of the
building continues with the
shape. The chapel, on the outside, has a sweeping line, coming to a peak point billowing towards the sky. The entrance to the chapel is nothing more than a slit in the folds of concrete, creating the feeling of an intimate,
cave-like enclosure on the inside. The structure feels and sounds cave-like, with its intimate scale and thick walls surrounding dark, hollow space.
Within the chapel, the building follows a
traditional layout. In the front is a large
altar with a
sacristy to the left. A large
choir space lines northern edge of the main chapel space, and wooden
pews fill the south edge. The main south entrance is situated behind the pews. Several
colored windows puncture the thick south wall creating
beams of light that burst through the thick material.
The
windows, and more broadly the use of
light and
darkness in the space is one of the most breathtaking features of the structure. The windows, positioned all over the dark wall of the south side of the church, and appearing as holes on the outside, display different shades of
primary colors, and inscribed on the panes are excerpts from
Marian prayers. The excerpts are simple phrases, such as “
étoile du matin,” “
pleine de grâce,” and “
je vous salue, marie.” These small phrases suggest Le Corbusier’s interest in the
poetic and
lyrical elements of the
spiritual.
The
roof of the chapel is a large, curved slab of concrete, underlaid with aluminum. Le Corbusier says that his inspiration for the roof came from a
crab shell, though critics have interpreted the sloping
curve as shapes diverse as a
nun's habit or a
boat. 1 The roof appears to
hover over the chapel, as a 10 cm band of light pierces through where the seam between walls and roof should be, “to amaze,” as Le Corbusier explains. This gesture reflects earlier themes in Le Corbusier’s work: often, thin
stilts supported a large
housing block, leaving the ground floor
hollow and
open.
Robert Coombes describes this dramatic feature:
"Le Corbusier raises the roof for
symbolic reasons relating to the
Assumption.
Levitation is astonishing because it denies the
laws of gravity. Thus, by denying our expectations—that roofs remain attached to buildings—Le Corbusier signals Ronchamp’s visitors that they are present at a
miraculous supernatural event."
It feels strange to mention the supernatural in talking about the
calculated and
rational Le Corbusier. It is apparent that a shift has occurred, or, perhaps something about the architect’s
intentions are, for the first time, being revealed.
Initially, Le Corbusier hesitated to take on the Ronchamp project. He was raised a
Protestant, and was understandably wary to accept a project from the
Roman Catholic Church.
Robert Coombes explains that Le Corbusier undoubtedly offended his colleagues by accepting a commission from the Church. “To the
Modernist establishment,
Roman Catholicism was
anachronistic and reactionary force in the
brave new world of
scientific rationalism and
progress.”
The chapel at Ronchamp is an
honest reaction to the philosophical and physical turbulence of
modern times. It seeks refuge in the intimate, the curios of
mysticism, the
lyrical and
poetic, the traditional, the
religious, and the
transcendental. At the same time, it retreats from the front lines of the true
avant-garde.
Sources:
1. Bell, Eugenia and Ezra Stoller. The Chapel at Ronchamp. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1999.
2. Coomes, Robert. Mystical Themes in Le Corbusier’s Architecture in The Chapel Notre-Dame-Du-Haut at Ronchamp: The Ronchamp Riddle. New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 2000.
3. Le Corbusier. The Chapel at Ronchamp. New York: Frederick A. Praeger Publishers, 1957.