Review of the Cloister La Tourette by by the Architect Le

Corbusier

The Cloister La Tourette, a monastery designed by the Architect Le Corbusier is not only a building,
but it is an emotional journey that you take walking through this spiritual environment created by
simply using space and “Architectural forms” to evoke serenity and calmness. This building “Santé
Marie de La Tourette” is a Dominican order priory it is located on the hillside in Lyon, France, and is
one of the last buildings designed by the 66-year-old Architect Le Corbusier, the design started on
May 1953 and ended 1961, and was recently inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The reason I decided to select this particular building is because it “speaks to me” personally, I like to
think that each building has a soul and this soul has to be cultivated by the type of design the
Architect makes and how the Architect translates the landscape and space into something as pure as
“Poetry”, here in case of La Tourette, Le Corbusier does the exact same thing, he personifies the
landscape and “poeticizes” the Architecture, he use the ideology of “form follows function”, since the
function of the building is housing “wisdom”(school), “spirituality”(monastery), “serenity”(Library). This
building therefore connects to the human body in a number of cases, as per my take on this building
and ideologies of Le Corbusier physically, the building is raised up on stilts, columns, and pillars, just
like a human body is “freed from the ground” by the use of legs, the floor plans open up just like a
human body torso enlarges from the waist to the chest, the free roof with terrace to act as solar gains
shows the human head and the ideology of absorbing wisdom.

The interior of the building is designed to accommodate the Le Corbusier Modular Man which suggest
how the interior is organized as per the human form, the interior of the monastery has three
fascinating connections to the human, the first character being the minimalistic view point to the
interpretation of serenity, spirituality and isolation for a form of focus towards the work at hand, this
psychological way of depicting Architecture is poetic.

Another character of the interior of this place is the culmination of “light and space”, the intellectual
way of producing light in a certain way takes a lot of observation towards the way light evokes
emotions, this idea of “holy light” or “spiritual light” is really well focused on, the light has been
controlled in such a format that it touches the human spirit and connects it directly to the Architecture,
and also to the function of the space.

Another character of the use of materiality of the interior as compared to the exterior of the building
makes us think about, the sort of façade that the human body is made up of and how the interior is
more complex in a way, in the same way this building has been created carefully, the materiality on
the outside is concrete and glass where Le Corbusier mentions concrete is his favorite material to
build with, this exterior façade is more rough and climate resistant like the human skin, whereas the
interior of the building is more inclined towards softer skin to create a welcoming emotion, but at the
same time some of the parts of the wall have more rough skin to emphasize on the minimalism of the
building.

The project that I am working on at the moment is about Landscape, and I am taking a standpoint of
how Architecture and Humans give a meaning to Landscape, this idea that landscape has a soul
which we cultivate overtime by Architecture, Farming, Housing, its this way that we design the
landscape and the Architecture that stands on it to complement each other at an emotional level, we
as humans don’t realize landscape until there is a human made form present on it that gives it life,
this piece that gives form to landscape is Architecture, Le Corbusier has the same ideology with the
landscape when he suggests that the monastery be placed on top of the hillside, for the reason that it
can be seen from far away, meaning he wants the building to compliment the landscape, the contour
around it, and suggesting that the landscape in-turn compliment the Architecture. La Tourette has
been placed on the hill top in a slightly fashionable manner almost suggesting the way a Human Body
is dressed and viewed, the building is designed “top-down” therefore creating an irregularity with the
relief, Le Corbusier says “let it sit as it will”, this ideology of making the building blend in with the
horizon and speak to the landscape is itself fictional.

The building uses concrete as a material and therefore personifying the idea of something being firm
and “concrete”, almost like a rock sitting in the landscape. This idea of placing the building where it is
and programing it, comes from one of Le Corbusier’s visit to Galluzzo, a “Tuscan town” Florence, Italy
which was place on a hill top which was a community with a townhall, church, school with streets
acting as corridors to give way, and each of the buildings had a view towards the landscape
determining this idea of how Architecture is nothing without the context of landscape, and further the
program of the La Tourette is based on this same ideology of creating a town in a single building by
creating school space, a town hall gather space, and a monastery space creating corridors in the
building as connections to these main spaces, the Architect also makes a ridge into the building
separating the main building from the monastery to suggest the division between the functionality in
the space, just like the town in Florence the architect uses glass windows divided by mullions to give
all the rooms a view out to the landscape, he divides the windows into this rhythmic form to create a
view of the landscape through this mathematical equation of creating space and views. The main
point I would like to make about the beauty of this building is about its terrace area, when it comes to
serenity and calmness the terrace really evokes this emotion inside a human soul since the terrace is
covered in earth and is cultivated with prairie like planters and it feels like you are “walking between
the earth and the sky” to meditate and connect the physical with the spiritual. A character rather
interesting about the building is this way of the entrance of the light and its manipulation to force you
to “fake” an emotion, the skylights which look more “enigmatic” and “violent” with their cannon and
assault gun like forms in the courtyard with the steep sloping roof of the forum in comparison to the
serenity and calmness of the other spaces in the building, but the skylight that is focused below these
fixtures is evoking spirituality and “holy light”, the building also uses bright colors at the entry way of
the light to create colored forms of light on the walls of the innermost part of the monastery.

This building as per my take on it is perfectly situated and has a right amount of work put into it to
create an experience of “being”, but if I had to disagree on the design and architecture, it would be the
way Le Corbusier uses these rather “playful” objects like pyramids or cubes or cones in spaces to
create light patterns on the building, I disagree with this part since it falls out of the context in the
sense that the building is supposed to make the person feel closer to god, I think it is a decision that
was made out of pure designing skills but sometimes the design can be interpreted in a different way
than what the designer thinks of it. The so called “Architectural Forms” that Le Corbusier uses are to
depict the essence of the sun on the building itself through the use of light and shadow, but since the
building already creates that type of character with the glass and the horizontal windows, I think it is
almost an “overkill”, what I mean by this is that Le Corbusier designs the building to be one with the
landscape and is poetic about the way landscape plays a part in the architecture, he designs these
perfect window fixtures to create lighting that encapsulates the host to feel the movement of time, But
by the end of the project the Architect decides to create forms that will also form shadows on the
building itself, that to me is disagreeable since it wouldn’t make sense in an “ethical” manner.

To conclude La Tourette can be called a masterpiece of its own creator since it has this glow of its
own where it has all these different phenomena’s coming together to make poetry and to make
architecture look as if it is a perfect piece of poetry is something I would admire and like to experience
and that is what make great Architecture, it’s not just four walls and a roof it is more than that it is the
soul of the place and the intellect of the designer.

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