Today, I left for Arbresle, a town one hour outside Lyon that houses the La Tourette Priory built by Le Corbusier between 1953 and 1959. The priory is a large, concrete structure built into a hillside over looking the rural countryside and is open to visitors as well as overnight guests. I, in fact, am spending the night here in a small, dimly lit monk cell. I have never slept in a place like this before and, I will admit, it is quite eerie. I also happen to be reading the most recent Harry Potter, so I imagine (inspired by tales of magic, death and danger) that a bloodthirsty friar is waiting to attack me while I rest.

Earlier today, I took a tour of the site following a long walk up the hill leading to the priory. The tours, conducted in both French and English, are very informative and help to explain the history of the La Tourette Priory. The Dominican monks founded the priory in 1943 on the property of an older estate built in the 1700’s. Marc-Antoine Claret de La Tourette, the original owner of the estate from whom the priory gets its name, was a botanist who meticulously altered the landscape with vegetation, walls and gardens in order to continue his studies of plant life during the decades following the French Revolution. As a result, Le Corbusier paid careful attention to the surrounding environment when he chose the location of the priory, understanding that the forests, trees and plants should be involved in his design. This respect for the landscape (unlike his Firminy site) is most evident in the layout of the building, which is initially two levels at the top of the hill and gradually extends to five levels at the bottom, using pilotis to support the structure in order to minimize its impact on the surrounding environment. However, Le Corbusier was not chosen as the architect because of his appreciation for the landscape. Instead, Marie-Alain Couturier (the head friar of the priory at the time) chose Le Corbusier to introduce Christians to modern art and architecture, hoping to promote modernism and to “demonstrate that prayer and religious life are not bound by conventional forms and that they can harmonize with the most modern architecture”. As a result, Couturier was able to look past Le Corbusier’s secular life in his desire to modernize Christianity. Without a religious background, Le Corbusier manages to successfully create numerous religious elements and statements throughout the La Tourette priory (not including the obvious chapel, church and crypt), illustrating modern architecture’s ability to reflect a function or purpose despite its simplified and often austere forms.

The most conspicuous example of these religious undertones in the La Tourette priory is the location of the church, which is the only structure in direct contact with the ground (the other three wings remain elevated on pilotis) and serves as a fourth wall that encloses the three residential wings by creating a central courtyard. As a result, Le Corbusier not only promotes the church as a sanctified space by digging its foundation into the earth, but he also makes the church a shielding structure in order to imply that God protects Christians from danger and harm. The symbol of the cross is also repeated throughout the building in intersecting shadows and covered walkways that converge in the center courtyard, once again strengthening the religious nature of the building. Furthermore, Le Corbusier uses concrete pillows, flowers (a term Le Corbusier coined to describe the sheets of concrete that protrude diagonally from windows) and ledges to create framed images of the landscape that reduce the possible distraction of nature on the friars. This was necessary in order to force the monks to continue their studies and religious obligations without completely eliminating the presence of the outdoors in the interior spaces.

I personally find the La Tourette priory to be one of the more interesting structures I have seen on this trip because of unusual sense of space that is created from a rare interaction between shapes and dimensions. Unlike other Le Corbusier sites I have documented on this blog, La Tourette is governed by a strict set of mathematical proportions. Le Corbusier combined the measurement of one meter and eighty-three centimeters (roughly Le Corbusier’s height) and the golden ratio of proportion to dictate the dimensions of many of the floor tiles, corridors and cells. Consequently, shapes are repeated throughout the priory, though the size of these shapes almost always changes. Le Corbusier then plays with this mathematical exactness by distorting the sense of space, often incorporating slanted ceiling or floors and conjoining rooms with different heights to alter the viewer’s sense of perspective. Occasionally, Le Corbusier disregards these ratios by adding circular spaces such as the meeting room and crypt, which use round forms to create a sense of intimacy that is missing in the rigid, rectangular rooms. The pyramidal roofed chapel and cylindrical and triangular skylights also interrupt these sets of ratios and proportions, once again changing the sense of space in unexpected ways.

Like all Le Corbusier sites, the La Tourette priory uses color and light to add warmth and depth to stark, concrete walls. For instance, in the church and crypt (which are adjacent rooms open to one another though they are on different levels), Le Corbusier paints slits in the walls and ceilings to give the impression of stained glass and to reveal the depth within the cavernous, dark space. Furthermore, to achieve a greater sense of depth in the priory, Le Corbusier had to modify the five points of architecture (pilotis, roof garden, free plan, horizontal window and free façade) by making the pilotis more noticeable and adding concrete pillow blocks and “flowers” to cast shadows that break up the flat façade. It seems as though Le Corbusier relied on light to achieve the sculptural forms of his earlier works like Villa Savoye and Villa La Roche. Light and color are also used to show a change in the function of space. This is most apparent in the chapel and organ, where shadows separate the non-secular and secular divisions of a room.




The La Tourette priory is also an interesting site because of the obstacles the friars and French government face with preserving the building. Because of the low budget and poor materials used to construct the priory, much of the structure suffers from water damage and electrical issues as well as the many problems associated with the crumbling concrete walls, ceilings and roofs (largely caused by the vegitation that grows on the roofs). To fix these issues, the priory has launched a 2,915,000 euro restoration that will replace the roof, windows, concrete on the building’s exterior and electrical systems. Like so many modern buildings, the La Tourette priory was not built with the proper materials and now relies on an expensive restoration to preserve its integrity and ability to function. As the twentieth century progresses, I believe it will become more and more important to preserve modern sites like the La Tourette priory because of the ideas and social transformations that they represent.

-Ian
Philip Johnson Glass House Intern