Did you know that it was Le Corbusier who built the Chapel of Ronchamp (Haute-Saône) ?  That there is an application for his works to be listed as UNESCO World Heritage Sites ? That the application was ousted by Vauban but reapplication is being made in 2009 ?

High Up on the Hill

When we think of Le Corbusier, we most often think of buildings that are colossal, angular, staggering or even visionary. So when we learn that he is the architect of a chapel, and what’s more, that the chapel is chubby and the lines are curved, we are amazed. But it is true, and frankly Notre Dame du Haut, for its eccentricity and authenticity, is worth a visit. It was built between 1950 and 1955 on Bourlémont hill in Ronchamp in place of a neo-gothic chapel destroyed in the 1944 shelling. Although the choice of the architect was not easy, it became clearer and clearer: it would be Le Corbusier. Born two hours away by road in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland, Le Corbusier, whose real name was Charles-Edouard Jeanneret, was involved at that time in the study of sacred art. That clinched it for the commission created to make the choice.

Le Corbusier and the Sacred

At the inauguration in 1955, the architect said this to the Archbishop of Besançon: Your Excellence, I present to you this chapel made of true concrete, mixed with temerity perhaps, with courage surely, in the hope that it will find in you as it does in those who will go up the hill, the echo of what we have inscribed in it. Today, 80,000 people climb the hill every year to admire a construction that plays on opposites: high and low, round and square, thick and thin. White walls, astonishing silence. A unique place that is one of Le Corbusier’s works which will allow – perhaps –the architect to join UNESCO World Heritage in 2009.

Candidate Again

In 2007, the application for the architectural and urban works of Le Corbusier to join the UNESCO World Heritage Sites was made in vain. It was Vauban who was preferred, hands down. No question of abandoning though, Le Corbusier’s works are up again for application in 2009: there are 14 of them in France (including the Ronchamp Chapel but also rental apartment buildings at the Molitor Gate in Paris and the famous Savoye Villa in Poissy) and 8 more in other countries (Germany, Argentina, Belgium, The Netherlands and Switzerland), which makes 22 works by the architect in all. Let’s bet that 2009 will be Le Corbusier’s year, and also Franche-Comté’s!

For further information about Notre-Dame-du-Haut : www.chapellederonchamp.fr