Le Corbusier's church at Ronchamp in France is a spiritual and architectural retreat. Emma Cullinan reports
When a small church on a hill in south-west France was completed in 1955 the community had in its midst a building that shook the architecture world by its foundations.
The church in the quiet town of Ronchamp came about because of an art-loving Dominican priest who persuaded architect Le Corbusier to design it. This was one of those cases where the right client gives a brilliant architect freedom, and where the architect relaxes enough to dispense with overly serious, tightly controlled work to produce a masterpiece.
Much has been written about Le Corbusier's (born Charles-Edouard Jeanneret) modular buildings, and planned townscapes or cities in the sky (high rises) to solve the post-war housing shortage but, when his work is illustrated, the picture chosen is nearly always the part of the chapel at Notre-Dame du Haut, in Ronchamp, where the roof rises up to a point, looking like (as the architect intended) the prow of a ship.
Few covers of books about Le Corbusier are without this iconic illustration yet the sculptural church building seems so far removed from the ordered modern buildings which the architect had designed previously. Architectural observers were left wondering: Post-Modern or Expressionist Modern?
I came to Le Corbusier backwards, then, because Ronchamp (as it is commonly known) was the first building of his that I saw, at the age of 10. I wasn't impressed by the architecture intellectually - what child is? You listen to your parents telling you how wonderful it is, you take their word for it and then see how bits of the building can be incorporated into games with siblings.
There's the pyramid of steps to clamber on (where the congregation sits during outdoor mass), the external alter with its stone table and steps to negotiate, the surrounding grass and the way that stunning icicles are formed as the water drips off the roof into a sculptural pond. Those parts of the buildings that appeal to children are what makes them so attractive, at a subliminal level, to adults.
Le Corbusier was innovative and inventive. His Villa Savoye to the west of Paris must have been fun to live in, with its ramp running from a first floor terrace up to the roof; its twisting central staircase and the mosaic chaise-longue beside the bath.
In the monastery at La Tourette it's possible to squish your body between small gaps in the walls and, even in Corbu's concrete Unite d'Habitation apartment blocks, the balconies are painted in different colours and the exteriors are imprinted with various forms, including Le Corbusier's comfortable Modular Man (an illustration of how Corbu related architectural measurements to the human form, to realise a human scale).
So the form of the Catholic church of Notre-Dame du Haut was an expression, late in Le Corbusier's career, of the architect's personality: it contains his art and his inventiveness.
Le Corbusier came from a Protestant background but it was his creative abilities rather than his religion which led Father Couturier to suggest Le Corbusier for the job.
Courturier, who trained as an artist before becoming a Dominican, was keen that the church use contemporary artists and had precipitated the involvement of artists Henri Matisse and Marc Chagall in the decoration of Notre-Dame de Toute Grace in Assy, in the French Alps.
In his magazine L'art Sacre, he wrote: "If such projects, which represent what are now the purest and strongest works of modern art, can be approved without difficulty by high church authorities, it means that something has changed in the French church!"
Couturier followed the words of Eugene Delacroix: "We must always bet on genius," and wagered that Le Corbusier was the man for the Ronchamp job. He secured the backing of Canon Ledeur and Francois Mathey, members of the Commission de l'Art Sacre for the local area, and they finally persuaded a reluctant local parish.
The citizens of Ronchamp had a war grant to spend on the new church, the old one having been destroyed in the second World War. Le Corbusier turned downed the commission but Ledeur talked him round. Le Corbusier referred to him as "the spur" of the project and Father Couturier as "the real awakener".
The carrots were the site - for centuries a place of pagan and Christian worship - and the promise that Corbu could go "all the way". What architect could resist?
While the form of Ronchamp is site specific, taking advantage of its hill-top position with spectacular views in four directions, the materials were dictated by the site too. "There is no practicable road to bring transport to the top of the hill," wrote Le Corbusier. "Consequently, I shall have to put up with sand and cement. Probably the stones from the ruin, cracked by frost and calcified by fire would do for fill but not for load bearing."
The roof was inspired by a crab that Le Corbusier picked up at Long Island, near New York, in 1946. "The shell will lie on the walls made of salvaged stones," he said. The roof, a shell of reinforced concrete covered in aluminium, was designed to carry water which is directed into the sculpture-filled reservoir at ground level. The walls are also made from reinforced concrete with the roof supported on columns within them.
The play of light was important to Le Corbusier and these supports enable a slither of sun to enter the church between the wall and roof. The thick south wall - in which the enamelled procession door is set - is actually one of the lightest, comprising an openwork frame with reinforcement grilles sprayed with concrete, and no rubble from the former church. Its great thickness allowed the pierced openings, which splay inwards, to direct shards of incoming light.
"The key is light, and light illuminates shapes, and shapes have an emotional power," said Le Corbusier, who responded to the sacred site.
The building looks complex but, on plan, it is actually a fairly simple rectangle. This shape is disguised by the huge southern wall shooting past the end of the building, yet still bearing the main roof; the curved roof, and the periscope-like chapel towers which indicate where the main doors are situated.
"I defy a visitor to give, offhand, the dimensions of the different parts of the building," said the architect.
Inside, the colourful windows and the large processional door bear the hand of Corbu: some enamelled with his bold, curvy writing and others with illustrations, in the colours and forms of contemporary artists such as Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse and Amedee Ozenfant.
The architect was dedicated to this building and put much of himself into it, visiting the site frequently. And now other architects do the same. The town of Ronchamp acknowledges this gem - and they have been celebrating the church's 50th anniversary this year with various events - but it's still a typical quiet French ville, in the countryside near the Jura mountains.
The hotel beside the road up to the church is a classic, with basic rooms and locals gathered at the bar behind the reception desk, cigarettes dangling from mouths and fingers. Service is matter of fact. The €35 for a double room is fair and it's well priced for architectural students who still flock here.
Artistic licence, engineering know-how and a good construction team led to this remarkable church which, while still catering for local worshippers, has become a place of pilgrimage for architects worldwide. And, like all clever buildings, it hasn't aged in its 50 years.
