Lodging hearts and bodies in silence
After World War II, the Dominicans in Lyon responded to the increased religious vocations by constructing a new monastic school for 80 students. The site, acquired during the war, encompassed 80 hectares of land, including a chateau, farms, fields, and woods.
In 1952, Reverend Father Couturier proposed that Le Corbusier to ‘lodge a hundred hearts and a hundred bodies in silence’.
In the spring of 1953 Le Corbusier visited the site for the first time:
“I drew the road, I drew the horizon, I noted the orientation of the Sun I sniffed out the topography, I decided where to build because that had not been decided at all. In choosing the site I committed either a criminal, or a worthwhile act.”
Le Corbusier
Le Corbusier, known for his iconic works like the Villa Savoye,and Unité d’Habitation, accepted the project at the age of 66, he was at the hight of his career, the incarnation of modern architecture witch he defined in 1932 :
Take a house, free the ground floor from the grip of the soil, increase the garden area. Free the roof by making it into a terrace. Long live the free plan in which walls are no longer needed. The concrete slabs of the upper floors are supported on stilts. Long live the free facades that support nothing, glass can be used with total freedom .
Unpopular material
Instead of raising the building from the ground up, the architect built it downwards from the horizontal line of the roof letting it meet the slope that the building touched where it might as Le Corbusier put it: ‘This where it might is a forest of pillars stilts openwork concrete shells spread over a variation in height of 10 meters that support the building and compensate for the irregularities of the relief.
The monastery is not meant to sink into the surrounding countryside. it is a concrete block on the side of a hill, concrete this unpopular material that is kept for factories and housing estates it is the architects favorite material, it is also the cheapest.
Xenakis, Melding Music and Architecture
The cells occupy the top two floors of the monastery, below them the corridors of the lecture rooms and the large community areas. The chapter, the library refectory are opened up to the view by the architect. The prime reason for his choice is functional, different facades for different purposes. The facades facing the inside courtyard are made of large squares of concrete and 2 meters 26 wide glass panels whose geometrical variations were calculated according to the modular, they are known as Mondrian squares in reference to the work of the painter Piet Mondrian.
But the architect had more in mind than just the functional legibility of the various spaces in the monastery. In the chapter and the refractory, he broke with the model of the traditional monastery and opened the large rooms to a view of Valley the contemplation of nature as a source for meditation. But the landscape is designed and redesigned by the sheets of glass and concrete mullions, the beauty of creation is only fully appreciated when measured by man.
Le Corbusier had charged one of his team, the young architect Iannis Xenakis with designing the large walls. At that time, Xenakis was composing his first musical work Metastaseis making a combinatorial analysis of melodic intervals, he used the same mathematical rule to regulate the distances between the slim concrete posts and the glass panels. Xenakis worked on several possibilities, Le Corbusier synthesized them and called the result undulatory panels.
The Cella
Inside, we only find the bare necessities: a sink, a shelf, a bed, a table, a window, and a loggia. Here, Le Corbusier realized his vision for monastic cells. The term “cell” originated from the Latin word “cella,” describing a small room used in a monastic context. This monastic cell represents both a disconnected, introverted space and a physical embodiment of interiority as a mental state.
The cells themselves are simple volumes with dimensions patented by Le Corbusier: five meters and 92 centimeters long, 1 meter and 83 centimeters wide, and 2 meters and 26 centimeters high. Le Corbusier developed the Modulor system based on the golden section and human proportions, with the basic unit being the height of an average American, raised hand included.
The cell allows the mind to “open up,” transcending its self-contained nature. In La Tourette’s cells, this dynamic between the interior and exterior is expressed. The loggia offers a panoramic view that resembles a projection on a wall, rather than a direct experience of the outside. The limited space restricts the view, devoid of the depth created by vanishing lines.
Conversely, the exterior doesn’t reveal much about the interior. The uniform facade fails to suggest the presence of an interior space. In the corridors, there is a dominant sense of uniformity, with numbered doors requiring name plates to differentiate them. This uniformity extends beyond the corridors to the layout of the cell floors.
In contrast to the cells that are largely open to the countryside, the architect had deliberately obstructed the view at the ends of the main corridors with what he called “concrete flowers” that look rather like medieval shields.
The corridors receive daylight through long horizontal loopholes that give on to the inner courtyard. The slit theme is accentuated by the curious concrete parallelepipeds that stick out horizontally at regular intervals.
A concrete box
What is lighting ? it is the wall on which light falls. It is illuminated wall, the emotion arises from what the eye sees that is the volume that the body receives by the impression or the pressure of the wall upon it.”
In the closed world of a monastery, the church occupies a special place. It is not reserved for the Dominicans alone, but welcomes all the faithful. Le corbusier marked this difference in status by the forms he used, he put a wide empty space between the church and the main building and gave it a radical treatment, the walls are bare.
A concrete box, a severe enclosed shape like a bunker without any apparent openings, they can only be seen from the inside, a high vertical slit to let in the light of the Rising Sun, a wide horizontal slit to let in the light of the Setting Sun. As the church is oriented in the traditional way, it marks the sun’s passage from east to west.
The church has no stained-glass windows, no Rose window, just the horizontal vents painted in bright colors. Two small buildings join each side of the main structure on the outside of the quadrilateral is the Crypt that is ear shaped topped with cannon mouths to let the light in.
The sacristy has seven geometric machine gun mouths for light.
The sacristy on one side and the Crypt on the other form the transept thus the church has the traditional cross shape. Where the main volume of the nave meets the transept stands the altar. On one side of the altar, in the wings of the church, is the sacristy. On the other side the Crypt set below as is proper and separated from the central volume by a half screen sound and light flow through but not sight.
In the crypt, are seven altars for the mass that each of the monasterie’s priests had to celebrate individually once a day, an obligation removed by Vatican too.
The serpentine walls that remain seem to follow the pressure of the ground and the strange slanting conduits that bring in the north light. The architecture the only mistress present in the place preserves its mystery.
Saved by Architecture
The monastery was only just opened when it was faced with two converging major crises, a Catholic Church that was trying to modernize with “Vatican 2” and the students revolt that came to a head in May 1968.
In 1970, only one student remained at LaTourette. In the deserted monastery that the Dominican Order was thinking of selling, some twenty friars resisted. they believed that the architecture of the place embodied the spiritual quest of their order in a unique manner.
The place transitioned to a more public role, hosting art and cultural events and accommodating guests and architectural pilgrims wish to stay. However, it remained Dominican, Saved by Architecture.
In July 2016, the building, along with sixteen other works by Le Corbusier, was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site for its exceptional contribution to the evolution of modern architecture.
Text references
- Le Corbusier Le Grand by Jean Louis Cohen and Tim Benton
- Le Couvent de La Tourette- un film de Richard Copans
- La Tourette by AA School
- Official Web site de la Fondation Le Corbusier
Photography by Egyptian architectural and documentary photographers Georges & Samuel (The GS Studio)
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