Following a break-in, architectural historians accuse chapel owners of letting the building rot while turning it into a 'money-making machine'

Erupting like a strange fungal outcrop from the top of a hill in eastern France, Le Corbusier's chapel of Notre Dame du Haut in Ronchamp has been a place of pilgrimage for devout architects and Catholics alike for 60 years, largely considered the finest work of the 20th-century's most influential architect. Last week, one of its windows was smashed by unknown vandals, who broke in and threw the (almost empty) concrete collection box outside. The action caused international outcry about the protection of historic monuments – for this was not any old window, but the only pane bearing the mark of Corb himself, a small blue square showing the howling man in the moon.

A window destroyed by vandals has been deemed irreparable due to the loss of its hand-inscribed design, executed by Corbusier.
A window destroyed by vandals has been deemed irreparable due to the loss of its hand-inscribed design, executed by Corbusier.

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Architectural historian and Le Corbusier scholar William JR Curtis has come out all guns blazing in an article titled “How one vandalism can hide two others”, to be published in the Architectural Review next month, with a fierce attack on how the chapel has been left to rot while being transformed into a “money-making machine”.

In the hands of the Association L’Oeuvre de Notre-Dame du Haut, which owns and runs the site, he says the chapel “is quite literally falling apart, with the white pebbledash cracked and crumbling away and the bare concrete eroding at the edges,” a state he describes as “scandalous” given the income from the 80,000 tickets sold each year.

Over €10m has been spent on a controversial series of works by Renzo Piano, including a monastery built into the side of the hill nearby, completed in 2011, and a new approach route that steers visitors towards the ticket office, out of kilter with Corbusier's original scheme of a ritualistic ascent up the hill.

The Piano project, writes Curtis, “was ‘sold’ behind a smokescreen of sanctimonious incense as enhancing the religiosity of the place. In fact it has done the opposite by treating this universal masterpiece as merchandise, de-sacralising the landscape and destroying the aura … The Chapel itself has quite literally been undercut and trivialised by a host of surrounding mediocre architectural gestures. Far from becoming more ‘spiritual’ the place has become more materialistic.”

On Feb 21, 2008, at 10:26 AM, Architexturez-IN wrote:

With a plan afoot for Renzo Piano to add buildings to the site of Le Corbusier’s famed Chapel of Notre Dame du Haut in Ronchamp, France, a perfect storm of good intentions in conflict is brewing. At issue are ultimately two types of pilgrimage: the original religious one of contemplation and prayer, and the latter-day architectural version.

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http://www.archpaper.com/news/2008_0219.htm