Le Corbusier

by Nicholas Fox Weber

  Light cannons at La Tourette, ca. 1957

  The ceiling of the small chapel lit by these lopsided, energized forms is painted a bright yellow. Inside and out, this chapel is yet another occasion at La Tourette when celebration acquires raw force. This lurid space with its crazy septet of light sources is charged with the reality of death as much as the solace of religion. It exudes the power of our most primitive and authentic emotions.

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  Supreme achievement and outstanding capacity are only rendered possible by mental concentration, by a sublime monomania that verges on lunacy.

  —STEFAN ZWEIG, “Buchmendel”

  La Tourette has, in addition to its sanctuary, all the elements of a monastery of the type Charles-Edouard Jeanneret had initially studied at Ema and inhabited on Mount Athos. It’s hard to know what to attribute to Xenakis or others on the staff at 35 rue de Sèvres and what to credit to Le Corbusier’s own genius, but the complex in central France is endowed with details that cause everyday acts to waken the mind.

  The corridor that provides access to the cells runs around a square interior courtyard, so that you take a quiet walk in fresh air before reaching your home base. You then enter the assigned residential unit on the side of the corridor opposite the courtyard—and proceed into a space that, at its far end, opens to a broad, seemingly infinite expanse of nature. The visual and tactile details of the cells have been carefully considered for the experience they provide. Most of the units are 5.92 meters long and 1.83 meters wide; their height is 2.26 meters. Unsurprisingly, these are all Modulor dimensions.

  These rooms for solitude are welcoming and at the same time challenging. You feel that your needs are thoughtfully accommodated, and everything is clean, but the amenities are rudimentary. As you enter, a simple washbasin is on your left, backing up to a short entrance wall, alongside the door. Directly in front of you, a plain armoire forms a sort of partition, parallel to the entrance wall. On the other side of it, a narrow bed runs along the sidewall. A basic desk at the far end is placed perpendicular to the window wall and affords a sideways view outside. A modest desk lamp and straight-backed wooden chair, the remaining essentials, are in place.

  The main activity in one of these rooms is lying, awake or asleep, on the cot, which is not much wider than a bench. You observe and reflect in conditions that echo those of a second-class train carriage. The rough and brutal is juxtaposed with the poetic.

  Lying on the hard bed with scant adjacent space, you feel compressed, enclosed by coarse and pebbly plaster that is stark to look at and cold to touch. Its hard, deliberately ungracious surface is unadorned by pictures or decoration of any sort; it becomes a tabula rasa for contemplation or fantasy. The green linoleum floor, surprisingly cushioned and soft underfoot, is a practical solution at the same time that its color and synthetic quality are jarring. Inexpensive and washable, this could be a surface in a hospital corridor that has to stand up to traffic; the governing force was that it was easy to maintain.

  A machinelike and spare dwelling space, the cell ensconces you in silence. Its austerity is initially unsettling; there isn’t a hint of luxury or embellishment, and the linoleum and rough plaster and coarse bed linens do nothing to comfort you. But then there is, as the conclusion of the space, facing the landscape, a composition made by a window, a narrow door (about eighteen inches wide) to the small loggia, shutters, and draperies. The window frames and the solid panel are yellow, the louvers orange, the other moving parts green. While the radiator pipes, underneath the window, are painted black, the wastewater pipes are cobalt blue. The colors lend charm to these assorted elements.

  Moreover, lying on the bed or sitting at the narrow desk, you look beyond that composition at the offerings of the world outside. Be it night or day, fine weather or storms, you can proceed onto the loggia, which runs the width of the cell and is 1.47 meters deep. Some of the cells adjoin lush woodland foliage; others open to a mountain vista. Infinity is the reward for your modest accommodations.

  One of the residential cells at La Tourette, ca. 1957. The bookshelves were rare, a special feature for one of the permanent residents.

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  The bare lightbulbs, rough shelving, and simple sink in each room fulfill life’s requirements without pandering to vanity or wastefulness. They compose a modest, unassuming stage for the great richness of observation, thought, reading, and writing. The living space that is like a splash of cold water on the face serves as a platform for the salubrious experience of nature that had always been essential to Charles-Edouard Jeanneret. He lived in a mixture of necessity, pain, and poetic abundance. The devices of his architecture combined the same elements. He achieved for the residents and visitors to a monastery the same blend of rigor and beauty he had realized in his own retreat on the Côte d’Azur.

  The auditory experience at La Tourette is comparable to the visual. The sounds throughout this carpetless building complex are as harsh as those on a clanking train. In your room, even with the door and windows shut, you hear other people using the plumbing or closing their doors. The mechanical crashing reverberates in your ears. Simultaneously, from outside, there is the symphony of the birds.

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  The stairs that link the floors of the monastery complex are steep and challenging. These long flights of steps are at an unusually sharp incline; the spacing of the treads and risers is uncomfortable and physically demanding. That design forces you to get from one level to the next with maximum efficiency. Le Corbusier publicly lamented that too few people in the world walk upstairs two steps at a time; at La Tourette, he forced the reach of the legs.

  There is a deliberate discord; things are at odds with one another. You go from the calm of nature and flowers, the poppies in high grass on the roof, to rough masses of concrete. You jump from the brutal candor of a metal drainpipe to a lovely and poetic play of soft colors. The kitchen door handles inject unexpected pleasure. The tough and the gentle, the factual and the charming, are united.

  IN THE LARGE central courtyard, a pointed pyramid form sits on top of the square oratory. Inside this simple space are modest benches. A rough stone slab forms the altar. Pencil-thin vertical windows that penetrate the pebbly, white plaster walls are the sole distraction as one looks upward to the high ceiling formed by the pyramid. The only traditional objects are a small crucifix on one of those walls and the Bible that lies open on the altar.

  The stillness and quietude here are breathtaking. The effect of the void and the leanness are infinitely soothing. Adornment would be an offense.

  From the outside, the pyramid creates a visual stop, a stasis in the midst of all the slopes and curves and light cannons. It resembles a metronome and functions as a similar means of balance. Is this yet another homage to his mother, to music, to the possibility of a dependable core to counter the whirlwind of life?

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  Brother Roland Ducret was on the scene when La Tourette was being built. Forty years after the monastery opened, his memories of Le Corbusier are still vivid. Brother Ducret recalled that many members of the order had been enthusiastic from the start, while others never wanted to set foot in it. The architecture was not the only issue. While Father Couturier had the idea that the monastic life was worthwhile and that the Dominicans should return to it, others objected to the idea of being at a remote location in the countryside. Their tradition was to work in cities—as opposed to the more reclusive life of the Cistercians.

  For those who accepted the principle, Le Corbusier was an ideal collaborator. If to his wealthy clients like Manorama Sarabhai he was difficult and contentious, insistent on imposing his will on theirs, to the Dominicans he was the model of cooperativeness. Told that it was a tradition to eviscerate the church, he replied, “No problem! We’ll eviscerate the church.” When the monastery was under construction, the brothers were living nearby in a château. The architect “thought of us as his children,” giving “a very warm welcome” and making them feel “like real
friends.”10

  Ducret was keenly aware that Le Corbusier had many adversaries. He felt that if others deemed the architect cold, this was because Le Corbusier was a polemicist: “His calcification was the result of people not understanding him.” With the Dominican brothers, he was “very warm, very friendly, very close.”11 The architect in his top hat and bow tie and double-breasted suit enjoyed an easy rapport with the monks in their austere white robes.

  Le Corbusier arrived for the inauguration of La Tourette on October 19, 1960, the day before the ceremony. He spent the night in one of the cells. Many of the Dominicans observed him that evening and the following morning, walking around alone, pacing up and down the corridors that linked the private and public areas. With a meter-long measuring stick in his hand, he busily measured everything, noting the dimensions of each small element, confirming their accuracy and speaking little.

  In the morning, before the actual ceremony, Brother Ducret accompanied the architect on his first visit to the church since it had been completed. The Dominican opened the large pivoting panel that separated the church from the low-ceilinged dark corridor. The tall and cavernous space, flooded with the light of the sky, was revealed. “A wall on hinges: it is a miracle,” observed Ducret, forty years after the opening, having opened and shut this wondrous device for most of his lifetime. He never forgot that, as the wall swung open, Le Corbusier looked in and simply whispered into his ear, “Bravo.”12

  THE EVENTS of the inaugural ceremonies included a high mass in which the eucharist was distributed. The Most Holy Reverend Father Brown, master of the Order of Preaching Friars, was the first speaker. Brown, an Irishman who did not know much about architecture, had been a friend of Couturier’s. He thanked Le Corbusier, in simple language, for making a building in which one could study and pray: “I am not an artist, and I perhaps lack the aptitudes necessary to judge the great virtues of this house, but I am certain, Monsieur Le Corbusier, that you are giving us a monastery which can serve for many long years, can worthily serve the purposes of the Order, the apostolic purpose of the Order.”13 Others speakers followed, mainly with prayers. Le Corbusier had tears streaming down his face throughout the ceremony.

  Afterward, during the repast in the refectory, Cardinal Gerlier of Lyon lectured at length. Then, he addressed a toast to Le Corbusier. The cardinal admitted that he had initially had many reservations about the architect’s work. But over the years he had come to see that Le Corbusier’s purpose was above all the mass that would be celebrated here.

  The cardinal also allowed, “Then I discovered that you were friendly, that you could be contradicted, that you could even be teased. Yet someone had told me ‘Watch out, Le Corbusier doesn’t like jokes.’ And I say to that person—he is listening to me now—‘You are wrong.’ And I am glad of that, for I have no great esteem for people who do not enjoy a joke.” The cardinal went on to say that he would leave Eveux happy that day because Le Corbusier had “the worship of spirituality which gives his works their true value.”14

  IN THE COURSE of the opening, Le Corbusier acknowledged Xenakis and Gardien, both of whom were present. Although he had never apologized for the Philips palaver—or considered himself at fault—he emphasized the importance of such marvelous collaborators, while, as usual, mentioning his foes: “This is one of the joyous moments of our difficult profession: to find one’s friends among those who know what they are talking about, which is to say, among those who execute, though many enemies oppose their progress, whatever it may be, even without knowing what it concerns, without having seen anything, without knowing anything at all!”

  In the sanctuary of Jesus Christ, Le Corbusier’s sense of martyrdom was accentuated. At least for once, however, it was in the happy context of felicitous partnership. And the hard facts of extreme financial limitations had been nothing more than an obstacle to be surmounted: “The house was built under conditions of poverty (to evoke that implacable aspect of economy), which find in me a man trained in those useful Indian gymnastics.”

  Le Corbusier also took up one of the elements of the monastic complex others might find problematic: its sound quality. “It is possible for poor acoustics to adapt to the liturgy,” he said. “The liturgy accepts them. So many churches have such poor acoustics that we confuse poor acoustics with the liturgy itself. This creates that echoing noise, that mystery, that confusion which occasionally charms. Here you confront acoustics that are of great purity.”15

  Le Corbusier’s declarations that day were a mix of audacity, crankiness, originality, and pure sacrilege: “Granted that I have, perhaps, a certain flair…. If you want to be kind and show sympathy to your poor devil of an architect, it is by formally refusing any gift concerning windows and images and statues, which will ruin the entire enterprise. These are truly things of which there is no need. Note that the architectural work suffices…. Yes, it does suffice, it suffices amply.”16 It was as if a descendant of the Cathars was avenging the conquerors.

  The Dominicans had, in fact, agreed in advance to Le Corbusier’s program by letting the architecture speak without the distractions of the traditional liturgical objects to which they were accustomed. Now, with unabashed boastfulness and repeatedly using his most beloved adjective to conjure a plenitude too great to be expressed, the architect told the inhabitants of this building what he had given them in return: “Proportion is an ineffable thing. I am the inventor of the expression: ‘ineffable space,’ which is a reality I have discovered in the course of my work. When a building achieves its maximum of intensity, of proportion, of quality of execution, of perfection, there occurs a phenomenon of ineffable space…which does not depend on dimensions but on the quality of perfection. That is the domain of the ineffable.”17

  Le Corbusier then looked at the cardinal and amplified on his spiritual intentions without pretending to a false religiosity. If for the opening of Ronchamp he had wanted his mother and brother to appear Catholic, at La Tourette he was known to be an atheist—or at least a nonbeliever in the Dominican sense. The public awareness of his Protestantism, as well as his own emotions that day, led him to reveal his true faith. He declared his respect for organized religion even if he did not practice it and emphasized the passionate belief system whereby he linked the acts of building and worshipping.

  Le Corbusier made the connections between the tactile, the visual, and the spiritual, and he voiced his faith in the richness of the earth and his love for human beings of all cultures.

  I shall add only this word: this morning’s ceremony, that ritual High Mass of the earliest days of your Order, that grandiose thing that stages High and Low, as the Chinese say, Heaven and Earth, with men and this present work, this monastery, this substantial structure, so full of finesse and so charged with sensibility to the limits of eye and hand. An encounter which for me is the joy of this day and perhaps much more still. I can say, in all simplicity: this architecture is valid!

  Your eminence, I thank you for having come here today. I hope that our rough concrete and whitewash can reveal to you that our sensibilities, nonetheless, are acute and fine underneath.18

  Le Corbusier’s remarks were eventually published. But there was another sentence that the architect uttered extemporaneously, that was not part of the programmed script. Roland Ducret never forgot it: “He has raised the earth to meet the…” At that moment, Brother Ducret remembered, Le Corbusier suddenly hesitated. “And then he stammered—he couldn’t find the word—and said, ‘celestial.’”19

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  After the inauguration, Le Corbusier issued one of his humblest public statements, as if Couturier’s personality had infused his own.

  Architecture is a vase. My reward for eight years of labor is to have seen the highest things grow and develop within that vase. The ceremony whereby the Catholic Church took possession of the monastery the morning of the inauguration was a very precise and very beautiful moment.

  I have tried to create a site of meditation, of r
esearch, and of prayer for the Preaching Friars. The human resonances of this problem have guided our work. An unexpected adventure—like that of Ronchamp. I imagined the forms, the contacts, the circuits necessary for prayer, the liturgy, meditation, and study to be at ease in this house. My profession is to house men. Here the question was to house men of religion, trying to give them what today’s men need most: silence and peace. These priests, in this silence, locate God. This monastery of raw concrete is a work of love. It does not speak of itself. It lives on its interior. It is in the interior that the essential occurs.20

  The result of his submission to a scheme, his approach to workmanship, respect for the client, and the goal of serenity and contemplation are evident on the hilltop near Lyon.

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  An article published in the Lyon newspaper the day after the inauguration gives a vivid description of Le Corbusier: “Le Corbusier is here, anxious, timid, rather embarrassed by all the prominent figures around him proclaiming their admiration. His lucid eyes assess the quality of the volumes, the alternating hollows and swellings, the bold outline of the structures, the modulations of the lines, the cohesion of the forms, etc., etc., and perhaps he remembers that Charterhouse of Ema, already so distant, where in his youth his human vocation as a builder was affirmed…. In the first row of those present M. Le Corbusier had on his right M. the Mayor of Lyon, Louis Pradel, and on his left Messrs. Gardien, Xenakis, Burdin, Ducret, Brisac, Messrs. Rostogniat, president of the Council of the Order of Architects, Foch d’Hauthuille, Maître Chaine. etc., etc…. Le Corbusier uttered a few words muffled by emotion, and it was apparent that the impassive architect, solid and loyal as the pillars of his Unités d’Habitation, had been deeply touched. ‘I have known many struggles, disappointments, attacks in my life,’ he explained…. ‘This morning I found my finest reward in discovering that my work could bring into play the High and the Low, man and spirituality, and could develop the most exalting regions of the human soul without the builder’s realizing it. Behind these simple and rough surfaces there is, do not doubt it, a rather fine sensibility.’ Yes! there, on the walls of La Tourette, is the human and unmasked message of Le Corbusier.”21