Notre Dame du Haut

Notre Dame du Haut
Religion
Affiliation	Roman Catholic Church
Ecclesiastical or organizational status	Pilgrimage Chapel
Year consecrated	25 June 1955
Location
Location	Ronchamp, Haute-Saône, France
Geographic coordinates	47°42′16.37″N6°37′14.08″E / 47.7045472°N 6.6205778°E Coordinates: 47°42′16.37″N6°37′14.08″E / 47.7045472°N 6.6205778°E
Architecture
Architect(s)	Le Corbusier
Type	church
Style	Modern
Groundbreaking	1953
Completed	1955
Materials	Concrete
Website
	www.collinenotredameduhaut.com
UNESCO World Heritage Site
Official name	Chapelle Notre-Dame-du-Haut de Ronchamp
Part of	The Architectural Work of Le Corbusier, an Outstanding Contribution to the Modern Movement
Criteria	Cultural: (i), (ii), (vi)
Reference	1321-012
Inscription	2016 (40th Session)
Area	2.734 ha (0.01056 sq mi)
Buffer zone	239.661 ha (0.92534 sq mi)
Monument historique
Official name	Chapelle Notre-Dame-du-Haut
Designated	1967
Reference no.	PA00102263 [1]
Denomination	Chapelle

Last updated August 28, 2019

Notre Dame du Haut (English: Our Lady of the Heights; full name in French : Chapelle Notre-Dame-du-Haut de Ronchamp) is a Roman Catholic chapel in Ronchamp, France. Built in 1955, it is one of the finest examples of the architecture of Franco-Swiss architect Le Corbusier. The chapel is a working religious building and is under the guardianship of the private foundation Association de l’Œuvre de Notre-Dame du Haut.^[2] It attracts 80,000 visitors each year.^[2]

French is a Romance language of the Indo-European family. It descended from the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire, as did all Romance languages. French evolved from Gallo-Romance, the spoken Latin in Gaul, and more specifically in Northern Gaul. Its closest relatives are the other langues d'oïl—languages historically spoken in northern France and in southern Belgium, which French (Francien) has largely supplanted. French was also influenced by native Celtic languages of Northern Roman Gaul like Gallia Belgica and by the (Germanic) Frankish language of the post-Roman Frankish invaders. Today, owing to France's past overseas expansion, there are numerous French-based creole languages, most notably Haitian Creole. A French-speaking person or nation may be referred to as Francophone in both English and French.

A chapel is a Christian place of prayer and worship that is usually relatively small, and is distinguished from a church. The term has several senses. Firstly, smaller spaces inside a church that have their own altar are often called chapels; the Lady Chapel is a common type of these. Secondly, a chapel is a place of worship, sometimes non-denominational, that is part of a building or complex with some other main purpose, such as a school, college, hospital, palace or large aristocratic house, castle, barracks, prison, funeral home, cemetery, airport, or a military or commercial ship. Thirdly, chapels are small places of worship, built as satellite sites by a church or monastery, for example in remote areas; these are often called a chapel of ease. A feature of all these types is that often no clergy were permanently resident or specifically attached to the chapel. Finally, for historical reasons, chapel is also often the term used for independent or nonconformist places of worship in Great Britain—outside the established church, even where in practice they operate as a parish church.

Ronchamp Commune in Bourgogne-Franche-Comté, France

Ronchamp is a commune in the Haute-Saône department in the region of Bourgogne-Franche-Comté in eastern France.

History

Notre Dame du Haut is commonly thought of as a more extreme design of Le Corbusier’s late style. Commissioned by the Association de l'Œuvre Notre Dame du Haut, the chapel is a simple design with two entrances, a main altar, and three chapels beneath towers. Although the building is small, it is powerful and complex. The chapel is the latest of chapels at the site. The previous chapel was completely destroyed during World War II. The previous building was a 4th-century Christian chapel. At the time the new building was being constructed, Corbusier was not interested in Machine Age architecture; he felt that his style was more primitive and sculptural. He realized when he visited the site that he could not use mechanized means of construction, because access was too difficult.^[3]

World War II, also known as the Second World War, was a global war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. The vast majority of the world's countries—including all the great powers—eventually formed two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis. A state of total war emerged, directly involving more than 100 million people from over 30 countries. The major participants threw their entire economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities behind the war effort, blurring the distinction between civilian and military resources. World War II was the deadliest conflict in human history, marked by 70 to 85 million fatalities, most of whom were civilians in the Soviet Union and China. It included massacres, the genocide of the Holocaust, strategic bombing, premeditated death from starvation and disease, and the only use of nuclear weapons in war.

On January 17, 2014, Notre Dame du Haut became the target of a break-in. A concrete collection box was thrown outside, and one of the stained-glass windows, also designed by Le Corbusier and the only one on the chapel to carry his signature, was broken.^[2]

Site

The site is high on a hill near Belfort in eastern France. There had been a pilgrimage chapel on the site dedicated to the Virgin Mary, but it was destroyed during the Second World War.^[4] After the war, it was decided to rebuild on the same site, The new chapel was built for a reformist Church looking to continue its relevance. Warning against decadence, reformers within the Church at the time looked to renew its spirit by embracing modern art and architecture as representative concepts. Father Marie-Alain Couturier, who would also sponsor Le Corbusier for the La Tourette commission, steered the unorthodox project to completion in 1954.

Modern art includes artistic work produced during the period extending roughly from the 1860s to the 1970s, and denotes the styles and philosophy of the art produced during that era. The term is usually associated with art in which the traditions of the past have been thrown aside in a spirit of experimentation. Modern artists experimented with new ways of seeing and with fresh ideas about the nature of materials and functions of art. A tendency away from the narrative, which was characteristic for the traditional arts, toward abstraction is characteristic of much modern art. More recent artistic production is often called contemporary art or postmodern art.

Marie-Alain Couturier, O.P., was a French Dominican friar and Catholic priest, who gained fame as a designer of stained glass windows. He was noted for his modern inspiration in the field of Sacred art.

Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, known as Le Corbusier, was a Swiss-French architect, designer, painter, urban planner, writer, and one of the pioneers of what is now called modern architecture. He was born in Switzerland and became a French citizen in 1930. His career spanned five decades, and he designed buildings in Europe, Japan, India, and North and South America.

The chapel at Ronchamp is singular in Le Corbusier's oeuvre, in that it departs from his principles of standardisation and the machine aesthetic, giving in instead to a site-specific response. By Le Corbusier's own admission, it was the site that provided an irresistible genius loci for the response, with the horizon visible on all four sides of the hill and its historical legacy for centuries as a place of worship.

In classical Roman religion, a genius loci was the protective spirit of a place. It was often depicted in religious iconography as a figure holding attributes such as a cornucopia, patera or snake. Many Roman altars found throughout the Western Roman Empire were dedicated to a particular genius loci. The Roman imperial cults of the Emperor and the imperial house developed in part in connections with the sacrifices made by neighborhood associations (vici) to the local genius. These 265 local districts had their cult organised around the Lares Compitales, which the emperor Augustus transformed into Lares Augusti along with the Genius Augusti. The Emperor's genius is then regarded as the genius loci of the Roman Empire as a whole.

A place of worship is a specially designed structure or consecrated space where individuals or a group of people such as a congregation come to perform acts of devotion, veneration, or religious study. A building constructed or used for this purpose is sometimes called a house of worship. Temples, churches, synagogues and mosques are examples of structures created for worship. A monastery, particularly for Buddhists, may serve both to house those belonging to religious orders and as a place of worship for visitors. Natural or topographical features may also serve as places of worship, and are considered holy or sacrosanct in some religions; the rituals associated with the Ganges river are an example in Hinduism.

This historical legacy was woven in different layers into the terrain – from the Romans and sun-worshippers before them, to a cult of the Virgin in the Middle Ages, right through to the modern church and the fight against the German occupation. Le Corbusier also sensed a sacred relationship of the hill with its surroundings – the Jura mountains in the distance and the hill itself, dominating the landscape.

Middle Ages Period of European history from the 5th to the 15th century

In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages lasted from the 5th to the 15th century. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire and transitioned into the Renaissance and the Age of Discovery. The Middle Ages is the middle period of the three traditional divisions of Western history: classical antiquity, the medieval period, and the modern period. The medieval period is itself subdivided into the Early, High, and Late Middle Ages.

The nature of the site would result in an architectural ensemble that has many similarities with the Acropolis – starting from the ascent at the bottom of the hill to architectural and landscape events along the way, before finally terminating at the sanctus sanctorum itself – the chapel. You cannot see the building until you reach nearly the crest of the hill. From the top, magnificent vistas spread out in all directions.

Architecture

Structure

The structure is made mostly of concrete and is comparatively small, enclosed by thick walls, with the upturned roof supported on columns embedded within the walls, like a sail billowing in the windy currents on the hill top. In the interior, the spaces left between the walls and roof and filled with clerestory windows, as well as the asymmetric light from the wall openings, serve to further reinforce the sacred nature of the space and reinforce the relationship of the building with its surroundings. The lighting in the interior is soft and indirect, from the clerestory windows and reflecting off the whitewashed walls of the chapels with projecting towers.

The structure is built mostly of concrete and stone, which was a remnant of the original chapel built on the hilltop site destroyed during World War II. Some have described Ronchamp as the first Post-Modern building, and others as the first building of the movement Expressionist architecture after World War II. It was constructed in the early 1950s.

The main part of the structure consists of two concrete membranes separated by a space of 6'11", forming a shell which constitutes the roof of the building. This roof, both insulating and watertight, is supported by short struts, which form part of a vertical surface of concrete covered with "gunite" and which, in addition, brace the walls of old Vosges stone provided by the former chapel which was destroyed by the bombings. These walls which are without buttresses follow, in plan, the curvilinear forms calculated to provide stability to this rough masonry. A space of several centimeters between the shell of the roof and the vertical envelope of the walls furnishes a significant entry for daylight. The floor of the chapel follows the natural slope of the hill down towards the altar. Certain parts, in particular those upon which the interior and exterior altars rest, are of beautiful white stone from Bourgogne, as are the altars themselves. The towers are constructed of stone masonry and are capped by cement domes. The vertical elements of the chapel are surfaced with mortar sprayed on with a cement gun and then white-washed — both on the interior and exterior. The concrete shell of the roof is left rough, just as it comes from the formwork. Watertightness is effected by a built-up roofing with an exterior cladding of aluminium. The interior walls are white; the ceiling grey; the bench of African wood created by Savina; the communion bench is of cast iron made by the foundries of the Lure.

The south wall

The South wall of Ronchamp is a creature of its own. Rather than designing a straight, 50 cm thick concrete piece, Le Corbusier spent months trying to perfect the outside wall. What he came up with is a wall that starts out as a point on the east end, and expands to up to 10 feet thick its west side. As it moves from east to west, it curves towards the south. To further expand his design's complexity, Le Corbusier decided to make the windows of the wall extraordinary. The openings slant towards their centers at varying degrees, thus letting in light at different angles^{[ clarification needed ]}. The different-sized windows are scattered in an irregular pattern across the wall. Le Corbusier reportedly insisted that the shapes and patterns were not arbitrary, but derived from a proportional system based on the Golden Section.^[5] Furthermore, the glass that closes the windows off is set at alternating depths. This glass is sometimes clear, but is often decorated with small pieces of stained glass in typical Corbusier colors: red, green, and yellow. These stained pieces radiate like rubies, emeralds, and amethysts, and act as the jewels of the already complex wall. After this extensive design, Le Corbusier decided not to make the southern partition a bearing wall. Instead, the building's roof is supported by concrete columns that make it appear to float above the rest of the space.

In a final move of symbolism, Le Corbusier filled the inside of the wall with the rubble from the previous chapel that stood at the location. Thus the old church, and all of its history, would remain in the site.

Furnishings

Small pieces of stained glass are set deep within the walls, which are sometimes ten feet thick. The glass glows likes deep-set rubies and emeralds and amethysts and jewels of all colors.

Because it is a pilgrimage chapel, there are few people worshipping at most times. But on special feast days, large crowds of thousands will attend. To accommodate them, Le Corbusier also built an outside altar and pulpit, so the large crowds can sit or stand on a vast field on the top of the hill. A famous statue of the Virgin Mary, rescued from the ruins of the chapel destroyed during WWII, is encased in a special glass case in the wall, and it can be turned to face inward when the congregation is inside, or to face outward toward the visitors.

Roof

Much like the church at Sainte Marie de La Tourette, the roof of Notre Dame du Haut appears to float above the walls. This is possible, because it is supported by concrete columns, not the walls themselves. The effect produced allows a strip of light to enter the building, thus lighting the space further, and making the church feel more open.

This billowing concrete roof was planned to slope toward the back, where a fountain of abstract forms is placed on the ground. When it rains, the water comes pouring off the roof and down onto the raised, slanted concrete structures, creating a dramatic natural fountain.

Addition

In 2006, the convent for the Clarisses, or Poor Clares, decided to construct a building next to the chapel. Le Corbusier himself had consulted with the Association de l’Œuvre Notre Dame du Haut about adding a monastery, but concrete plans were never developed. Following the initiative of the abbess, Sister Brigitte de Singly, the Poor Clares commissioned Renzo Piano; the association had considered several architects besides Piano, including Tadao Ando, Glenn Murcutt, and Jean Nouvel. The project met great opposition when plans were unveiled in 2008. Architects like Richard Meier, Rafael Moneo, and Cesar Pelli signed an online petition denouncing the project.^[6] The French Ministry of Culture, which is required to approve plans for changing cultural landmarks, approved Piano's design.

In October 2011, Archbishop Luigi Ventura, the papal envoy to France, came to bless the convent. Immersed in the vegetation of the Bourlemont hill, the monastery is composed of twelve 120 square-feet domestic units for the sisters with spaces for common living (a refectory and workshops), an oratory for religious pilgrims, and a lodge to host visitors. The new visitors' centre, also dug into the hill, forms the base of the convent, thus replacing a 1960s gatehouse that had obscured sight of the chapel from the town below and was removed in the process of construction. The all-in budget of $13 million was realised through local government funding, charitable and religious donations, and the sale of the nuns' former convent in Besançon.^[7]

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References

↑ "Monument historique — PA00102263". Mérimée database of Monuments Historiques (in French). France: Ministère de la Culture. 1993. Retrieved 12 March 2013.
1 2 3 Victoria Stapley-Brown (January 31, 2014), Le Corbusier’s Chapel of Notre Dame du Haut vandalised The Art Newspaper .
↑ Germaine Greer (October 17, 2007), A concrete version of dizzy rapture The Guardian .
↑ Bianchini, Riccardo. "The Notre Dame du Haut chapel by Le Corbusier – Ronchamp". Inexhibit. Inexhibit. Retrieved 20 September 2017.
↑ Herbert Muschamp (November 14, 1999), At Last, Buildings Are the Stuff of Dreams New York Times .
↑ Michael Kimmelman (April 17, 2012), Quietly Adding to a Modernist Masterpiece New York Times .
↑ Jonathan Glancey (September 25, 2011), Renzo Piano: let there be light in the convent The Guardian .

External links

Colline Notre-Dame-du Haut
Page from the Galinsky Building Site
Pictures of the exterior and the interior of the building
360° Tour of the building by the Media Center for Art History, Columbia University
Official website of the commune of Ronchamp