Notre Dame du Haut, Ronchamp, France

Informally known as Ronchamp, the chapel of Notre Dame du Haut in Ronchamp, France completed in 1954 is considered one of the finest examples of architecture by the late French/Swiss architect Le Corbusier and one of the most important and successful examples of religious architecture in the 20th century, an honor it shares with the Matisse Chapel in Vence. Image File history File links Download high resolution version (900x600, 120 KB) Ronchamp, Notre-Dame du Haut, by Le Corbusier Photographed 18. ... Image File history File links Download high resolution version (900x600, 120 KB) Ronchamp, Notre-Dame du Haut, by Le Corbusier Photographed 18. ... A chapel is a private church, usually small and often attached to a larger institution such as a college, a hospital, a palace, or a prison. ... Ronchamp is a town and commune of the Haute-Saône département in northeastern France. ... The Parthenon on top of the Acropolis, Athens, Greece Architecture (from Latin, architectura and ultimately from Greek, αρχιτεκτων, a master builder, from αρχι- chief, leader and τεκτων, builder, carpenter) is the art and science of designing buildings and structures. ... Architect at his drawing board, 1893 An Architect is a person who is involved in the planning, designing and oversight of a buildings construction. ... Charles-Edouard Jeanneret, widely known as Le Corbusier (October 6, 1887– August 27, 1965), was a French Swiss born architect, famous for his contributions to what is now called modernism, or the International Style. ... The Chapelle du Saint-Marie du Rosaire (Chapel of Our Lady of the Rosary), often referred to as the Matisse Chapel or the Vence Chapel is a small chapel built for Dominican nuns. ...

Site

The site is high on a hill near Belfort in eastern France. The reason for this is unknown by the public, so you will be introduced to the secret- he just wanted attention There had been a pilgrimage chapel on the site dedicated to the Virgin Mary, but it had been destroyed during the Second World War. After the war, it was decided to rebuild on the same site. The Chapelle Notre-Dame-du-Haut, a shrine for the Roman Catholic Church at Ronchamp, France was built for a reformist Church looking to continue its relevance. Warning against decadence, reformers within the Church 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. The Roman Catholic Church or Catholic Church (see terminology below) is the Christian Church in full communion with the Bishop of Rome, currently Pope Benedict XVI. It traces its origins to the original Christian community founded by Jesus Christ and led by the Twelve Apostles, in particular Saint Peter. ... Modern art is a general term used for most of the artistic production from the late 19th century until approximately the 1970s. ... Père Marie-Alain Couturier, known as Father Couturier (November 15, 1897-Februari 9, 1954) was a Dominican friar, designer of stained glass windows, famous for his modern inspiration of Sacred art. ... Year 1954 (MCMLIV) was a common year starting on Friday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

The chapel at Ronchamp is singular in 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 Roman mythology a genius loci was the protective spirit of a place. ... A place of worship is a building or other locations where religious persons may worship their deity, regularly or not. ...

This historical legacy was woven in different layers into the terrain Рfrom 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 Рthe Jura mountains in the distance and the hill itself, dominating the landscape. The Middle Ages formed the middle period in a traditional schematic division of European history into three ages: the classical civilization of Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and modern times, beginning with the Renaissance. ... Looking towards Lelex from near to Cr̻t de La Neige The Jura folds are located north of the main Alpine orogenic front and are being continually deformed, accommodating the northwards compression due to Alpine folding. ...

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. Acropolis of Athens from the south-west with the Propylaea and the Temple of Nike (left centre) and the theatre of Herodes Atticus (below left) Acropolis (Gr. ...

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. The Christian Church sees itself as the ship of God, bringing safety and salvation to followers. 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. Image File history File links Download high-resolution version (2146x1373, 655 KB) File links The following pages on the English Wikipedia link to this file (pages on other projects are not listed): Notre Dame du Haut ...

The chapel is renowned for its simple aesthetic and curvilinear artistic expression, along with the size and layout of windows, which were based on his modulor, on the buildings' perimeter which fill the chapel space with dim but compelling light. 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. It was constructed in the early 1950s. // The Modulor is a scale of proportions devised by the French architect Le Corbusier (1887–1965). ... Concrete being poured, raked and vibrated into place in residential construction in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. ... The rocky side of a mountain creek near Orosí, Costa Rica. ... Combatants Major Allied powers: United Kingdom France Soviet Union United States Republic of China and others Major Axis powers: Germany Italy Japan and others Commanders Winston Churchill Charles de Gaulle Joseph Stalin Franklin Roosevelt Chiang Kai-Shek Adolf Hitler Benito Mussolini Hideki Tojo Casualties Military dead: 17,000,000 Civilian... Postmodernism (sometimes abbreviated pomo) is a term applied to a wide-ranging set of developments in critical theory, philosophy, architecture, art, literature, and culture, which are generally characterized as either emerging from, in reaction to, or superseding, modernism. ... // Recovering from World War II and its aftermath, the economic miracle emerged in West Germany and Italy. ...

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. This floor is constructed of a cement paving poured in place between battens, the design of which is dictated by the modulor. 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 the 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. A strut is a structural component designed to resist longitudinal compression. ... Gunite is a form of concrete and a method of its application. ... A buttress (and mostly concealed, a flying buttress) supporting walls at the Palace of Westminster Four different types of buttress: diagonal, on the statues plinth; an ordinary buttress supporting a flying buttress, to the right of the statue; a small ordinary buttress to the right side of the picture... Masonry is the building of structures from individual units laid in and bound together by mortar. ... Look up daylight in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Look up Slope in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Look up Altar in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... A batten is a thin strip of solid material (usually wood). ... // The Modulor is a scale of proportions devised by the French architect Le Corbusier (1887–1965). ... In mathematics, the interior of a set S consists of all points which are intuitively not on the edge of S. A point which is in the interior of S is an interior point of S. The notion of interior is in many ways dual to the notion of closure. ... Location Administration Capital Dijon Regional President François Patriat (PS) (since 2004) Départements Yonne Côte-dOr Nièvre Saône-et-Loire Arrondissements 15 Cantons 174 Communes 2,045 Statistics Land area1 31,582 km² Population (Ranked 16th)  - January 1, 2005 est. ... This article includes a list of works cited but its sources remain unclear because it lacks in-text citations. ... Mortar holding weathered bricks. ... The term cladding can have a number of meanings: Regarding optical fiber in telecommunication, cladding is one or more layers of material of lower refractive index, in intimate contact with a core material of higher refractive index. ... General Name, Symbol, Number aluminium, Al, 13 Chemical series poor metals Group, Period, Block 13, 3, p Appearance silvery Atomic mass 26. ... For the death metal band from Sweden, see Eucharist (band) The Eucharist (or Communion or The Lords Supper etc. ...

Furnishings

Small pieces of stained glass are set deep within the walls, which are sometimes seven 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 show up. 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, 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 huge crowds.

Roof

The billowing roof of concrete 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 but natural fountain.

References

External links

• Page from the Galinsky Building Site
• Pictures of the exterior and the interior of the building
• A walk-through tour of the building
• A web slide-show of the building

Coordinates: 47°42′14″N, 6°37′16″E Map of Earth showing lines of latitude (horizontally) and longitude (vertically), Eckert VI projection; large version (pdf, 1. ...