Le Corbusier

A look at the models, plans, designs and sketches for the Notre Dame du Haut pilgrimage chapel in Ronchamp, France, immediately reveals the significance and the unique nature of the building. Even today, many people equate Le Corbusier’s architecture with strictly geometrical cubist villas and “housing units”, seeing it as the epitome of modernist architecture. Ronchamp does not conform to this image at all. The architecture is astonishing, dynamic, organic and simply poetical. The Ronchamp chapel resembles sculpture more than architecture and can best be described as an outstanding synthesis of art, sculpture and architecture.

Even in his early drawings, Le Corbusier was analysing and recording the essential lines and structures of what he saw. A similar process can be seen at work with regard to the church in Ronchamp. In one text, Le Corbusier explained how he found the shell of a crab on the beach of Long Island close to New York in 1946. The artist- -architect captured the structure of the shell in a few lines. Starting from these sketches, he made further studies and sketches allowing him to gradually develop the organic form of the roof of the chapel in particular.

“The effect of the work (architecture, statue or painting) on the environment: waves, cries or shouts, the near or distant place is shaken, tamed and caressed by them. A phenomenon of congruence occurs, just as it does in mathematics – a real-life manifestation of plastic acoustics.”

Le Corbusier altered a number of elements of his architectural approach after the Second World War. The material and with it the surface structures and practical uses changed at that time. Le Corbusier used exposed concrete with its rough, austere surface. The concrete could now be poured and made to take on any desired form – Le Corbusier called these shapes “free-form surfaces”. The artist-architect pushed the envelope to the limit with the chapel at Ronchamp. It was built between 1950 and 1953.