Word: ronchamps
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Dates: during 1955-1955
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After liberating French troops knocked out the church again in 1944, a local committee headed by a lawyer, a manufacturer and the curé decided to save on building costs, construct the new church in reinforced concrete. Even in provincial Ronchamp, the name of the best architect for the job was obvious: Swiss-born Charles Edouard Jeanneret. world famous under his professional name, Le Corbusier,* as Europe's leading exponent of reinforced concrete...
Shape & Sound. Hats in hand, a village delegation waited on Le Corbusier in Paris, got a brusque turndown from the master. But soon afterwards Le Corbusier showed up in Ronchamp. climbed Haut Lieu, and after peering around the site, began making quick architectural notes. For Le Corbusier, who is currently building a new capital city at Chandigarh in India's Punjab (TIME, June 8, 1953) and erecting a second edition of his much-discussed Marseille "radiant city" outside Nantes, the opportunity to build his first church was irresistible. What particularly caught his interest was the problem of designing...
...Ungodly & Ungainly." As Le Corbusier's chapel in rough concrete and white plaster began to take form atop Haut Lieu, Ronchamp villagers threw up their hands in horror. The Walls, instead of rising straight upwards, sloped inward or outward like sets for a surrealist movie. The ceiling sagged like a tent ceiling. The main church tower, looking like an ocean liner's funnel, and two lesser towers served only as light wells for chapels within...
...Corbusier. The broad church door also bore a symbolic painting by Le Corbusier, done in enamel. Capping it all was a swelling, sausage-roll roof from which extends a mighty spout to carry rain water to a concrete tank. Said Abbé Besançon, one of Ronchamp's priests: the church is "ungodly and ungainly...
Gypsy Blessing. But as dedication day approached, excitement steadily mounted in Ronchamp. A steady stream of famous visitors had replaced the villagers' early doubts with growing pride. Said Dominican Father Regamey, whose order sponsored Matisse's chapel at Vence: "Le Corbusier's modulated chapel in reinforced concrete is hard and soft at the same time, like the Gospels." Swiss Architect Hermann Bauer praised it as "more like sculpture than a work of architecture." A band of gypsies, adept at mind reading, decided they liked the new chapel "because of its pure form and white color." Even...