“La Tourette is in-situ cast concrete, and it reads as a singular structure in spite of its volumetric and formal complexities and apparently tectonic language. The monastery is suspended between earth and sky; it echoes the dark depths and gravity of the earth while reaching towards the sky, hovering weightlessly on its dense system of piloti. This building merges the opposing human dreams of flying and being buried in the earth. Le Corbusier’s floating man-made cliff feeds light into its very bowels, evoking an animistic sense of breathing. As Constantin Brancusi, the master sculptor, exclaims: art must give suddenly, all at once, the shock of life, the sensation of breathing” – Juhani Pallasmaa
The reading of the building originates from this antithesis: man’s primitive will of flying versus his fear and, at same instant, urge of contact with the earth. It is a journey towards the mystic, tied to the personal growth of Le Corbusier as an architect and even more as an artist. He is an acrobat poised on the wire of his time, in search of what he defines the “ineffable space” – an architectural fourth dimension, synonymous to relativity according to Einstein’s space-time theory. This historical fact, together with the discovery of speed – a consequence of the invention of the automobile – morphs man’s perception of the world: no longer two-dimensional, but total in its asymmetry.
La Tourette must be experienced within this dynamic vision. It is a voyage towards the underworld, imagined as a concrete prison set in the bowels of the earth. Light assists us down the whole way, to whose end a mystical darkness awaits us. It is not only a promenade architectural but also an ambivalent, introspective journey. We reflect on ourselves and on the religious choice: the suffering path of life’s learning goes hand in hand with the renunciation’s vow of the monks.
