Notre Dame Du Haut – Le Corbusier

Le Corbusier's Ronchamp chapel is one of his most important buildings

One of Le Corbusier’s most famous designs is a small chapel located in Ronchamp, France known as the Notre Dame Du Haut.  Notre Dame Du Haut is commonly thought of as one of Le Corbusier’s most extreme works because of its overall design and how many complexities are put into one small building.  During the time of this project, Le Corbusier was no longer interested in the simplistic and modern Machine Age architecture that he had focused on in his earlier career.  The structure is small and mostly made up of concrete and stone which was done to pay homage to the original chapel on the site which was destroyed by bombings during World War II.  It features a large upturned roof which is supported by numerous columns that are built into the exterior walls of the building.  One of the most interesting aspects of the chapel is the south wall.  Le Corbusier spent months just on the design of the south wall itself.  Rather than just a normal wall that is perpendicular to the other two that it borders, the south wall curves out from the building in a shape that is similar to the roof of the chapel.  To make it even more interesting he incorporated many different types of windows to make it look even more complex and extraordinary.  On the south wall, there appears to be a random assortment of windows of arbitrary sizes and depth but Le Corbusier dismissed this claim.  Le Corbusier claims that the windows are ordered according to the “golden ratio.”  Le Corbusier also filled the inside of this wall from the rubble of the previous chapel so that all of its history and meaning would live on in the new chapel.

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