‘Chapelle Notre Dame du Haut: Le Corbusier by Himself’ Xavier Delory
The chapel Notre-Dame-du-Haut, built by Le Corbusier between 1951 and 1955 on the hill Bourlémont, Ronchamp (France), was commissioned by the Dominican friars. Among them, was the father, Marie-Alain Couturier, who campaigned for the introduction of architecture and modern art in religious constructions.
Le Corbusier was not only an architect, he was also a painter and sculptor. He is the author of the phrase “synthesis of the arts” meaning an alliance between painting, sculpture and architecture. At first he thought about what painting and sculpture could bring to architecture, not playing a decorative role but rather “as a house guest” In a second phase, he moved this level of synthesis to a fusion of modern architectural styles at Ronchamp.
For Le Corbusier, Ronchamp is ‘A syn-thesis of the arts’, or perhaps ‘novelty architecture’ for the architect and theorist Robert Ventury.
In his book “Learning from Las Vegas “ (1972), the latter perceives the concept of “novelty architecture” as: architecture in which buildings and structure have an original, peculiar form, often with the aim of self-publicity, to stand out as a visually attractive object in the landscape, and sometimes just as a simple expression of the owner or architect’s eccentricity. Today, some architectural experts state that the architecture of certain 'star’ architects (such as Frank Gehry, Daniel Libeskind…) is “novelty architecture’.
Images and text via Xavier Delory
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