notre dame de haut architectural diagrams

Le Corbusier was brought up as a Protestant and in later life adhered to no particular faith but he did have a sense of ‘higher things’ and alluded to the spiritual in art through phrases such as ‘l’espace indicible’, loosely translated as ‘ineffable space’. The literature on Ronchamp is vast and reveals the extent to which the building drew upon diverse sources from crab shells and boats to ancient Roman ruins and North African mosques. Original site plan sketch by Le Corbusier, defining the pilgrims’ path up to the Chapel (in yellow) It was always understood that the Chapel should serve the needs of the occasional visitor of whatever belief while also being available for Masses throughout the year and catering to the vast influx of pilgrims on the two key dates of the Marian calendar: the Birthday and Assumption of the Virgin Mary. Nature itself was a source of inspiration and the Chapel combined an interior nave with an exterior one with the hills of the Vosges as the backdrop. While responsive to Catholic liturgy and symbolism, the building reinvented the very idea of a church by fusing modernity and ancient archetypes. The building itself was conceived as a dynamic sculpture-in-the-round interacting with the landscape and creating an interior, sacred space intensified by light and shadow.

When Le Corbusier designed the Chapel of Notre Dame du Haut to stand on the hill at Ronchamp in the early 1950s it was always his intention that the building should be a remote pilgrimage site linked to the surrounding horizons and approached by a processional route up a diagonal pathway. The construction of a new visitor centre and convent at Ronchamp illustrates the folly of trying to transform a serene pilgrimage site into a venue for mass tourism

Notre dame de haut architectural diagrams