Residential complex in Marseille Le Corbusier. "Housing unit" (Unite d'Habitation) Le Corbusier in Marseille Living unit in Marseille by le Corbusier

HOUSE OF LE CORBUSIER. (TOURIST'S NOTES)

"...Sightseeing tour of the city of Marseille...
To begin with, we stopped near the famous house of the famous Charles Le Corbusier. Corbusier is the same icon for France as Gaudi is for Spain. He is the founder of the architectural style of rationalism, his works shocked people, like the Eiffel Tower and the Georges Pompidou Center in Paris.

Corbusier is a genius; his works are studied in all architectural schools. Back in the 20s, he developed ergonomic and functional furniture, playing with space and light. In 1947, he built a house in Marseille, which, despite all its outward appearance, is one of the symbols of the city.

A huge nine-story box stands on 6 legs, there are no external walls - solid windows, inside there is a kindergarten, a dining room, etc. Each family has a separate apartment. The apartments are small, devoid of any decoration. We went into one - we were let in by a woman who has been living here for 30 years, or rather, she always lived here before, and now she lives in Paris and uses this apartment when she comes to the sea to relax (3 hours on TGV, but more on that later). Excellent view of the sea, fresh air... Eh, we wish we could live like this... I worked, studied, and then relax at sea. And here there is already a table and a house... :)

But let's get back to business. The apartment has a small shower built into the wall, the entrance to it is through the entrance hole (there is no other way to call it), measuring 50x120 centimeters. As a measure of length, and this is why all architects adore Corbusier, they used a “modulor” - an average person, a comrade - exactly my dimensions. All other proportions in the building, such as ceiling heights, room sizes, etc., are calculated based on the Golden Ratio. There are also a huge number of “tricks” in the building, which I deliberately do not talk about in order to intrigue you. Don't be lazy, be curious :)))

After we ate, Silvana and Claude took us to the old area adjacent to the Old Port. Italians used to live in this area, and it was quite poor, but now the local “bo-bo” - bourgeois bohemia - is increasingly settling here. The famous singer and film actor Yves Montand (Livi) lived here as a child. The house in which he lived stood almost at the very top of the hill, and therefore his mother shouted to him through the window when he was playing in the yard: “Ivo, monta!” (Ivo, rise up!), and thus the pseudonym Yves Montand appeared. Nowadays there are more and more double-glazed windows in this area, but the streets are still narrow, crooked and picturesque in their own way.
In the same quarter, but on the shore of the bay, are the oldest houses in the city. One of them, in order to make a wide street, had to be raised and turned 90 degrees. There is also a fort, a cathedral and a rather interesting architectural monument of the Vieille Charité (Vieille Charité is an old house of mercy. Previously it was a free hospital with a church inside, but now it houses several museums under one roof..."

Mikhail Sokolov, at mail.ru

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Corbusier architecture layout project

The beginning of the 1950s is the beginning of a new period for Corbusier, characterized by a radical renewal of style. He moves away from the asceticism and purist restraint of his previous works. Now his handwriting is distinguished by its richness of plastic forms and textured surface treatment. The buildings built during these years again make us talk about it. First of all, this is the Marseille block (1947-1952) - an apartment building in Marseille, located separately on a spacious green area. Corbusier used standardized duplex apartments (on two levels) with loggias on both sides of the house in this project. Initially, the Marseille block was conceived as an experimental housing with the idea of ​​​​collective living (a kind of commune). Inside the building - in the middle of its height - there is a public complex of services: a cafeteria, library, post office, grocery stores, etc. For the first time on such a scale, the enclosing walls of the loggias were painted in bright pure colors - polychrome. In this project, proportioning using the Modulor system was also widely used.

Similar Residential Units (partially modified) were erected later in the cities of Nantes-Rezème (1955), Brie-en-Forêt (1961), Firminy (1968) (France), and West Berlin (1957). These buildings embodied the idea of ​​Corbusier’s “Radiant City” - a city favorable for human existence.

In 1950, at the invitation of the Indian authorities of the state of Punjab, Corbusier embarked on the most ambitious project of his life - the project of the new capital of the state, the city of Chandigarh. The city, which includes the administrative center, residential areas with all the infrastructure, schools, hotels, etc., was built over a period of about ten years (1951-1960, completed during the 1960s). Collaborated with Le Corbusier in the design of Chandigarh were architects from England, the spouses Maxwell Fry and Jane Drew, as well as Pierre Jeanneret (Corbusier's brother), the three Chief Architects who supervised the construction. A large group of Indian architects led by M. N. Sharma also worked with them.

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Buildings designed directly by Corbusier himself belong to Capitol, the administrative center of the city. These are buildings Secretariat, Palace of Justice And Assembly. Each of them is distinguished by a bright characteristic of the image, powerful monumentality and represents a new word in the architecture of that time. As in the Marseille block, they used a special technology for processing the concrete surface, the so-called “béton brut” (from French? --? “raw concrete”) for exterior decoration. This technique, which became a feature of the new style of Le Corbusier, was later picked up by many architects in Europe and countries in other regions, which made it possible to speak of the emergence of a new trend of "brutalism".

The construction of Chandigarh was supervised by Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister of independent India. The city was created by designers entirely from scratch, in a new place, and, moreover, for a civilization of a different type than Western ones.

Overall it was a completely new, unexplored experience. Subsequent assessments in the world of this urban planning experiment are very contradictory. However, in India itself, Chandigarh is considered today one of the most convenient and beautiful cities. In addition, in India, several buildings were erected according to Corbusier’s designs in the city of Ahmedabad (1951-1957), also very original both in terms of plastic and internal design.

The 1950s-1960s were the time of the final recognition of Le Corbusier. He is crowned with laurels, showered with orders, and each of his projects is being implemented. At this time, a number of buildings were built that cemented his reputation as the No. 1 European avant-garde architect.

The main ones are - ronchamp chapel(1955, France), brazilian pavilion on campus in Paris, complex Monastery of La Tourette(1957--1960), building Museum of Western Art in Tokyo (1959). The buildings, very different in their architectural image and plastic design, have one thing in common - they are all original, innovative works of architecture for their time.

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One of Corbusier's last major works was the cultural center of Harvard University, built in the USA, Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts(1959--1962). This building, in its striking unusual forms, embodied all the diverse experience of Corbusier of the last period. Unlike the collective project to create the UN headquarters, this is the only building by Le Corbusier in North America with officially recorded authorship.

Corbusier died at the age of 77, drowning, presumably due to a heart attack, while swimming off Cape Roquebrune, on the Mediterranean Sea, where he lived in his summer house Le Cabanon. This tiny residence, which served him for a long time as a place of rest and work, is a unique example minimum dwelling according to Corbusier. The process of farewell to the architect took place in the Louvre on September 1, 1965, under the leadership of the writer Andre Malraux, who was then the Minister of Culture of France. Corbusier was buried next to his wife in a cemetery between the cities of Roquebrune - Cap Martin and Menton.

In addition to his architectural heritage, Corbusier left behind many works of plastic art and design - paintings, sculptures, graphic works, as well as furniture designs. Many of them are kept in the collection Foundation Le Corbusier, which is located in the villa La Roche-Jeannerre, built by him, in Paris. And also in Pavilion Heidi Weber in Zurich (Le Corbusier Center), an exhibition building in high-tech style, built according to his own design.

In 2002, the Le Corbusier Foundation and the French Ministry of Culture took the initiative to include the works of Le Corbusier in the list of UNESCO World Human Heritage sites. Having secured the support of the countries in which his buildings are located - France, Argentina, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, India, Japan - these organizations prepared a list of works by Le Corbusier for inclusion in the “Monuments...” and submitted their proposal to UNESCO in January 2008 of the year.

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Rice. 9 Church of Saint-Pierre in Green Firminy

Rice. 10 Monument to Le Corbusier in Moscow

In 1947-1952. This is one of the main attractions of the city, and many people come here specifically for it. Even if you are interested in something completely different in Marseille, bouillabaisse or Chateau d'If, do not be lazy and go to the “Radiant City”.

Quite a few of Le Corbusier’s buildings have survived (one is even in Moscow, the Centrosoyuz building), but the Marseilles one is special. This is the first of five “residential units” (as the architect called his apartment building project) built, perfectly preserved and open to visitors. And the best thing is that it gives you the opportunity to be not only an idle observer, but also an active consumer: there is a museum, a restaurant and even a hotel. We were lucky to see a few more apartments as we ended up visiting Le Corbusier during Heritage Days.

The house should stand on stilts and not take up space on the ground, Le Corbusier believed

In a nutshell, the story is this. After the war, France, like other countries, needed a lot of housing, and traditional individual housing could not save the situation at all. Le Corbusier's project was ideal. You won’t surprise us with such a size, but by European standards this house is huge, really almost a city: 337 apartments, designed for 1,600 inhabitants. It was united with the city not only by its size, but also by its infrastructure. In addition to apartments, shops, cafes, a kindergarten, etc. were arranged in the house, and the corridors looked more like streets (as they are called, by the way). On the exploited, as in all the projects of Le Corbusier, the roof could play sports or just walk. There were as many as 23 types of apartments in the house, from tiny studios for one to multi-room apartments for families with eight children. Le Corbusier was to some extent inspired by the Communal House of Narkomfin, architect Moisei Ginzburg. For example, it was from Russia that the idea of ​​two-level apartments and a long corridor running through the entire house came. True, the French architect did not deprive residents of the right to privacy, much less to prepare food (as much as possible!) - all apartments had kitchens, small but comfortable, with built-in furniture designed by Charlotte Perriand. The idea was not so much about living together as about convenience. Those who were completely lazy could not even go to the store, but order groceries home. For this purpose, a box like a large mailbox was cut into the walls: the peddler opened it from the corridor and left the products, and the buyers took them from inside the apartment.

However, the past tense is completely inappropriate here. Unlike the Narkomfin building, the Marseille “residential unit” is doing well. Even better than before: it has long been transformed from social housing into elite housing; representatives of the “bobo” class, bourgeois bohemians, live here. Apartment prices are high by Marseille standards (and ridiculous by Moscow standards - €3,000–3,500 euros per 1 m²), and utility bills and house maintenance add up to the rental price of a good apartment in an ordinary building. The building is recognized as an architectural monument, so nothing can be altered, even inside. One apartment, No. 601, has been preserved in its original form and is shown to visitors. Another apartment, No. 50, belongs to the architects, who, on their own initiative, restored it, removing all later additions, and restoring all the lost elements, even the sockets. From time to time they invite designers to complement Le Corbusier's interior with their furniture, and then the apartment can be viewed. In other apartments, residents are more free, they can change furniture and even kitchens and plumbing - it is clear that comfort standards have changed since the post-war years.

Apartment of jewelry designer Valerie Ciccarelli

On the “street” of the third floor there are still shops and offices, although now they are more likely to be real estate agencies and architectural bureaus than bakeries. A few years ago, the Le Corbusier hotel and the Le Ventre de l'Architecte restaurant opened there. Both are run by Le Corbusier fans who live in the same house, Dominique and Alban Gerardin. They are very careful about the master's heritage, preserving it whenever possible interiors, or at least the spirit of the author of the house. Ascetic hotel rooms cost from 75 euros. We didn’t take advantage of the opportunity to stay with Le Corbusier - the house is not in the center and we didn’t want to travel by bus every day, but we had lunch at the restaurant. I highly recommend it - cheerful southern cuisine in a high-tech design and with a designer presentation. True, the chef has changed since then, but at least the menu looks good.

Gastronomic restaurant Le Ventre de l'Architecte

The most recent innovation of the “Radiant City” is the art center MAMO, which was set up in a former gym on the roof. The reconstruction, or rather restoration, was carried out by the famous Marseillais Ora Ito. Although the designer despises authority, he respects the great modernist, so he simply returned the gym and terrace to their original form. Now there are exhibitions and a café furnished with furniture from the Cassina brand, which produces things by Le Corbusier and Charlotte Perriand. The architect himself keeps order on the roof - a giant sculpture by Xavier Veillant. In general, an exploitable roof is one of Le Corbusier’s best ideas. It's a pity that it didn't become part of everyday practice.

MAMO Art Center in a renovated gymnasium, in front of it is a sculpture by Xavier Veillant depicting the author at work at home

LE CORBUSIER.

PERCEPTION OF SPACE.

The ability to manipulate space is the basis of the profession of an architect. People get pleasure from listening to music, perceiving paintings with their eyes, following the intricacies of the plot in a novel or movie. What about architecture? It turns out that we are able to very strongly physically sense and empathize with the surrounding space.

We feel with our eyes details, planes and textures. We record the change in volumes and spaces. We run into obstacles. We pierce the walls through the openings. We peer through the gratings and glass... We climb onto the dome of the Florence Cathedral, first along a narrow staircase, then we experience fear on the balcony of the “heavenly” interior, we hardly make our way through the space of double curvature between the outer and inner dome and, finally, we find ourselves in a gallery hovering above city. In order to experience this, people fly thousands of kilometers and pay huge amounts of money. Millions of people greedily “devour” the spatial delights of Hong Kong skyscrapers, Capadocia caves or the remains of the Roman forums. Entire countries live by selling spatial sensations to insatiable tourists.

An architect rarely gets lucky enough to "play" with spaces. And very few people can do it. Le Corbusier was one of the few who could deliberately create buildings rich in spatial emotions.

Many have heard his name. But I suspect not many people understand what this phenomenon is in the architectural world. About half a century has passed since he died, swimming on the border with Italy, near the town of Rocobrune. Architectural forms flourished during this time. Most people, and even professionals, look at photographs of his works (only a few study the originals) and smile indulgently. Yes ... In those distant times, it was probably “cool”. I want to show that it's "cool" now.

What's good about the Parthenon? In the Pazzi Chapel, in Place Vendôme or in the Barcelona Pavilion. Their beauty is debatable. But what is certain is that they are deeply professionally meaningful. Nothing extra. Every detail is precisely related to the whole. Interior and exterior are inseparable. They amaze not with their “circus” form, designed for those who are surprised, but with their fantastic spatial elaboration, aimed at understanding spectators. This is exactly what Le Corbusier did.

But not only that. He came up with a city of 3 million inhabitants. It was invented, and not compiled from some samples. In the center of his city is not trade, not a church, not offices, but a giant transit hub. He came up with a new type of housing - “villanblocks”, that is, houses consisting of small two-story villas. He came up with the skeleton of a living cell - “domino” and much, much more. The range of his ideas is enormous! But he didn't just make things up. His books: “The Modern City”, “When the Cathedrals Were White”, “Urbanism”, “A House Like a Palace” and many others are masterpieces of journalism. He built many buildings, and among them not only beautiful museums and villas, but also entire cities. He has a lot of unfulfilled projects, among them the planning of the new Algiers and Montevideo. Finally, he developed a completely original measuring system, Modulor. What strikes me in all these works is the way Le Corbusier manipulated architectural spaces. He played them like a brilliant musician. To learn to listen to the music of architectural forms, you need to carefully study his works. Preferably in kind. Let's take a closer look at several of its objects.

In 1922, Le Corbusier proposed building Willenblocks. The idea was simple. There is a middle class. They may not have the money for a full-fledged villa with a garden. So is it possible to make a multi-storey building consisting of micro villas?

This is how projects of residential buildings and even entire blocks appeared, consisting of small, two-story buildings standing on top of each other - villeinblocks. Le Corbusier promoted his invention in every possible way. At the Art Deco exhibition in 1925 he built Esprit Nouveau pavilion, representing a cell of such a two-story villa, and filled it with his projects.

It is interesting that half a century later, in Paris, Bernard Tschumi, among the pavilions of La Villette Park, was going to restore the Melnikov Pavilion and the Esprit Nouveau Pavilion as the most significant spatial delights of the 20s. So far this has not been possible.

The space of the villa can be divided into two zones. In the entrance area, two galleries permeate all the blocks on the floor. The outer gallery is intended for servants, and the adjacent inner gallery is for “gentlemen”. Behind the galleries there is an entrance vestibule, a staircase to the second tier, a low part of the living room and a kitchen. On the second floor there are bedrooms. The second half of the block is mainly two-light. Its right part is a two-story living room, and the left (1/4 part of the block) is a kind of garden into which all the main rooms of the cell open.

This is a brief description of this amazing living space, which still has no direct analogues. I believe that all subsequent experiments with two-story apartments (House on Novinsky Boulevard, houses in Nantes, Marseille, etc.) were based on the structure of villeinblocks.

Le Corbusier built several villas. For me the most significant Villa - Savoy in Poisy, near Paris. This is his early work (29 - 31 years). Externally - nothing special. Matchbox on legs. Total 700 sq.m.

But a person who gets into it will experience an amazing set of plastic sensations. If we look at this structure from above, we see not a building, but an amazing Corbusierian sculpture.

The house has three floors. On the ground floor, columns stand freely along the façade. The premises are located indented from the façade lines. They contain a vestibule, a garage, a laundry room and utility rooms, isolated from the “master’s” chambers. The lobby is small but well proportioned. At the same time, its glass walls are semicircular. A small dark door leads to the garden. The spiral staircase and ramp go up, so that you can choose the path of movement. But there is another, purely functional, “secret” ladder. It leads from the storage and utility rooms on the first floor up to the kitchen.

Villa Savoy. Spatial effects, details.

The second is the main floor of this villa. This is where the living quarters are located. The bedrooms are small but very comfortable. From here, along the corridor, past the kitchen, we find ourselves in a long living room, the outer side of which is cut through by narrow windows, and the second is entirely glass. A person naturally turns towards the light - and there is a huge terrace surrounded by a wall with unglazed strip windows. Through these windows you can see the surrounding nature. It seems that the composition of the spaces on the second floor is built on the principle of a snail. The premises are gradually increasing. From the closed bedrooms, through the kitchen and small office - into a long living room with a sliding glass wall. Through this wall there is a view of the “terrace room” open to the sky. There are open strip windows in the walls of the terrace, and through them you can see a vast lawn framed by oak trees along the border of the site. It's amazing how elegantly the site is included in the perception of the home space. It is also surprising that the master creates such a complex spatial effect using the relatively small space of the house and the site itself. But the spatial “snail” of the second floor is not the only advantage of this villa.

The path from the ground floor to the roof - the solarium - is also worthy of surprise. The lobby and the second floor are connected by a staircase and a ramp. The easiest way to access the bedrooms is through the stairs, and the ramp into the living room. Above the second floor, a ramp rises to the solarium along the street. In general, the ramp personifies the calm step of the guests. A suite of large presentation spaces opens up in front of them. Inside the house there is a living room, and outside there is an extensive terrace and a light-filled, sculptural solarium from which you can view the magnificent surroundings.

The spiral staircase is closed. It is narrow and very flexible. Movements along it are fast and purposeful. The route is simple. It is necessary from the lobby and utility areas, without going outside, quietly bypassing the guest areas, to get into the bedrooms, and then higher into the small enclosed spaces of the solarium. The external shape of the solarium premises, thanks to a spiral staircase and a certain plastic screen, creates curved surfaces that deliberately violate the “box-shaped” silhouette of the building. Thus, people can live in two spaces: external - formal, and internal - intimate. These spaces are not simply separated, as in traditional villas, but, constantly intertwining and interacting, create incredible spatial and plastic effects. From these positions, one can compare the plasticity of the dismantled structure with huge modern villas, filled with randomly combined spaces.

The search for the spatial and sculptural delights of the Villa Savoy can be continued ad infinitum. It is impossible to describe spatial emotions in a short article. But it’s even more difficult to find them using drawings or photographs. Villa Savoy can only be felt physically, being inside this amazing building.

After the war, in 1947 - 52, Le Corbusier built a residential building in Marseille, the so-called Marseille block or Marseille unit. In fact, this is an apartment building, but how does it differ from the world practice of building houses of this type.

You can walk around the block all day, being in completely different spaces. For many years, this structure was considered one of the most significant architectural works of the 20th century. Now, if you evaluate architecture as an object of admiration, then the Marseille block is not one of the best. Thousands of imitations have devalued his image. I want to prove that even now it has not lost its significance.

The creation of the Marseille block is based on two ideas. One is plastic, apparently coming from the villeinblocks, and the second is social, which can be attributed to the Soviet communal houses of the twenties. In this regard, the house of M. Ginzburg - I. Milinis on Novinsky Boulevard, where Le Corbusier visited when he came to Moscow in the 30s, deserves special attention. The first idea can be seen in apartments and corridors. The second is in the public spaces included in the building.

About apartments. The house is pierced by low, long corridors leading to residential apartments. Their plastic complexity is created by colored walls, recessed entrance doors and drawers for laundry operations. From the corridor you can enter two two-storey apartments. One is developing above him. The other one is underneath. Thus, between the corridors there are two apartment floors of 2.28m each. clean. If we enter the apartment, which develops upward, we are faced with a hallway, a kitchen and a living room 3.36m wide, partly double-height. On the second floor there is a bedroom hanging over the living room space and two narrow bedrooms (children's) 1.66 m wide. At the entrance to such a bedroom, there is a washbasin, a wardrobe and a bed against the wall. Further, closer to the window, there is a desktop and a sliding wall. With its help, you can combine part of the space of two rooms. Behind the bedrooms and behind the living room there are deep loggias (it is very sunny in Marseille), which allows this house to be more than 20 meters wide. Perhaps someone living in such an apartment will not seem quite comfortable. The apartment is not big. The master bedroom opens into the living room. Small bedrooms are low, narrow and too long. But for those living in an apartment, there is a constant contrasting change of sensations, which creates the illusion of a complex, multidimensional, and at the same time, private space.

In addition to housing, the Marseille block has four levels of public areas. Below, at ground level, there is an entrance vestibule and powerful supports that support the entire building. Among these supports and the surrounding greenery, Le Corbusier managed to convey an amazing feeling of power, coolness and tranquility, more characteristic of an oak grove than the foundation of a large residential building.

In addition, on part of the 7th and 8th floors, the Master creates a two-story street, protected from the rays of the sun by a forest of vertical blinds. There are restaurants, shops and a gym on two floors of this street. This is an absolutely amazing element of the Marseille block. From low corridors with dim electric lights, a resident suddenly, inside his home, finds himself in a bright urban space with small cafes and bars. But this is not enough; the resident of the house can get onto the roof into a completely new spatial environment. This is not a tangle of apartments, not an internal street, not bars, not shops or cool pedestals. This is a view of a magnificent expanse open to sun, sea and greenery. Like any work by Le Corbusier, the roof is a unique sculptural composition. But the most amazing thing is that this sculpture conveniently houses a stage, a kindergarten, a splash pool and a jogging track. Everything works for plastic.

Standing on the roof, a person had the impression that he was above an abyss, but when he approached the edge, next to him, under him, there was a narrow treadmill encircling the entire house. The path outside is closed by a wall taller than a man. This is another spatial delight. There are many such delights in the house, it is filled with them from the roof to the foundation supports. What is worth, for example, both the plastic facades and their completely unexpected coloring. Or an elegant spiral staircase at the end of the facade. So it's not just a house. Spatial impressions can be enough for an entire city.

I visited the Marseille block several times. “I love my apartment, but it’s not very comfortable to live in,” one resident told me. “The house is amazing, but I don’t use any shops or restaurants,” echoed another. There were tourists sitting in the restaurant. Children from other neighborhoods were running on the roof. A hotel appeared on one of the floors. So, not all systems serving the house, invented by the Master, worked. But for hours I could not leave the building, physically feeling the sculptures of its spaces. This was an amazing tutorial on "real" architecture. If, as Le Corbusier put it, “a house is a machine for living in,” then the Marseille Block is more of an experimental concept car than a comfortable bourgeois city car. In this regard, it is interesting to compare the exquisite spaces of the Marseille unit with a similar-sized house in Yasenevo or Biryulyovo.

In general, Le Corbusier tried to create plastic delights, subordinating all the elements of his buildings to a certain “Modulor”. This unified measuring system, in his opinion, should have been accepted by the architectural community, similar to the metric one. He argued that if you follow the Modulor, any building, of any style, will be proportionate and beautiful in all its details. Many people in the sixties and seventies were fond of Modulor. But beauty did not come automatically. Only the Master himself could use such a tool.

This building surprisingly resembles something. Not the witty semiotic interpretations of Jencks, and not even the analogies with the Pskov churches that A. Meyerson insists on, but something completely different. Later I realized: its analogue is a megalithic dolmen. There are many of them in Brittany. Huge stones standing vertically, covered with giant slabs. Sometimes there is a round entrance. The top stone lies unevenly - one edge is higher than the other. Crevices.

A dolmen is most often associated with a tomb. But some, the largest ones, served as dwellings or temples. The dolmen is exciting because it is the source of monumental architecture. He is out of fashion, He is out of time, He is the most ancient act of human will. A very suitable example for the “eternal” creation of the most ambitious architect of the twentieth century.

The structure has amazing plastic delights. But perhaps the most interesting thing that struck me about this object was the presence of an external altar. Such a simple thing, but it's hard to remember the analogue. There are facade frescoes in South Slavic churches. There are temporary structures for mass prayers, when the porch becomes an altar. But the presence of a specially created external altar, pulpit and lectern in the church is new. The outer altar is quite simple, but in certain lighting it surprisingly takes on the appearance of a fragment of Le Corbusier’s paintings, with clearly defined figures of roughly crumpled shapes.

Mainly cloudy. There is a preacher in the pulpit. Full feeling of church action. Empty. The sun came out and the shadows painted a three-dimensional painting. Such mystical transitions of architecture into sculpture and painting can neither be described nor fully comprehended. They work especially hard from the eastern corner of the altar niche, where the curved wall opens through a gap into a small door leading inside.

A few steps to the side, and the picture changes dramatically. From the south-eastern corner the entire volume begins to work powerfully. The form is simplified: only white walls and two pieces of dark roof are visible. This is where associations with a dolmen, a hat, a mushroom, the bottom of a ship, etc. arise. It is this corner point that is the most memorable image of the chapel.

South side. Change of scenery. A breakwater, cutting the roof in half, separates the picturesque picture of the eastern wall from the plane of the southern facade. The southern façade “works” with contrasts. A tall light tower to the left of the entrance; a dark, heavy roof and a stunning white wall covered with a network of small windows. M.O. Barsch said that when they, the Soviet constructivists, came to Italy, they were shocked by the role of detail in Renaissance architecture. It was this detail that reconciled them with the Stalinist classics. On the south facade of the chapel there are no droppers, no scotia, no edgings. Apparently, Le Corbusier understood this and therefore he created Modulor. On the southern façade, windows rhythmized with modulator create an amazing feeling of the smallest detail.

Between the wall and the tower (which I would like to see as a bell tower), in a niche is the main entrance to the chapel. On the doors (gates) there is the only colored detail of the facade. This is an abstract painting of the Master, perhaps symbolizing the divine origin of the Modulor system. Blue-red geometry. Star. Hands. Clouds…

North side "team". Consists of four different parts. On the left is an open altar, over which hangs a "piece" of a dark roof. Next is a wall with modular windows (close to the south facade). This part of the facade is crossed by a strange iron staircase, reminiscent of an emergency exit from a movie booth. Next are two half-towers flanking the daily, working entrance to the chapel and a rounded wall leading to the western façade. The northern facade is clearly not front. Business. Worker.

The western side is characterized by a high semi-cylindrical light tower and a small stucco convexity, which in its form conveys the internal confessional booths. In front of the wall is a strange sculpted font, which is supposed to receive water from the roof of the chapel when it rains. Water enters through a water cannon. This is the only analogy with Gothic. However, no chimeras. The water cannon is designed in the form of long buffalo nostrils, apparently inspired by India, since Chandigarh was built at the same time.

The chapel does not look like a Catholic church, especially the interior. In a traditional Catholic church, there is no free will, no choice. The rhythm of the columns, the rhythm of the windows, the structure of the ceiling - everything is directed towards the altar, and then, through the dome, towards God. In Ronchamp, everything is deliberately free. The master puts himself above the canon. Le Corbusier does the same with residential buildings, villas, museums. He develops his own style, his own system of measurements, his own order, his own social program and his own church canon. As a result, he places not God, but his spatial ambitions, at the center of the prayer temple.

The interior of the chapel is a hymn to flowing spaces. Light and shadow in a relatively small room give rise to hundreds of spatial sensations. Each step to the side opens up a new form. These forms create an amazing mystical effect, and although this is not a traditional cathedral, you want to pray here. The divinely sublime mood is created primarily by a series of openings in the southern wall. Dark. Light passes through narrow colored glass. Eight benches on a small rise, dimly lit by windows. The benches facing east are in a large space, but when you sit on them, you find yourself in some isolated mystical zone. In front of the altar, and in the distance a window with a crucifix. The eastern façade, the one with the altar on the outside, is covered, like the night sky, with a series of small “holes.” These holes are so small that they are not visible on the façade. But in the interior they “work” very actively, especially on a sunny morning. An important detail: there is a thin, uneven gap between the roof and the south-eastern walls. This gap creates a powerful light effect. Thanks to him, the huge roof does not press, but floats above the interior.

The wonders of the chapel's interior space do not stop there. Under the high tower next to the confessionals there is a chapel with a small altar, open to the interior space. On the contrary, in one of the towers of the northern entrance there is a second small isolated chapel. Powerful overhead light dissolves into the spaces of these chapels and draws people out of the darkness of the interior. Calms. Hypnotizes. Fascinating.

The north-eastern corner of the chapel with an altar and choir looks somewhat unexpected, reminiscent of a fragment of a residential interior. Small details in this area include the light windows of the northern façade and the rhythm of the steps on the back side of the staircase leading to the pulpit.

The detailed description of the chapel that I have given, naturally, does not give any idea of ​​what a person feels when mastering the building with his eyes and body. Music can be recorded. Record ballet movements. Plans, sections, facades, and architectural structures are also recorded, but it is not yet possible to adequately convey spatial emotions to another person. Even in the movies.

I see dozens of great computer animations every day. Their number increases and depreciates. Having convenient design computer programs and an infinite number of constructed samples, it is easy to compile certain forms. But the quality of an actually constructed object will always be determined by the paradoxes of the flow of spaces, shapes and surfaces, and not by drawings and “three-dimensional images”. The Japanese take schoolchildren in droves on excursions to masterpieces of modern architecture, teaching them to feel the play of spaces in nature. For a cultured person, this is as necessary as listening to music and perceiving painting.

I am convinced that in the near future it will be impossible to instrumentally model spatial sensations. Here we will have to remember the great Master and his amazing ability to form spatial experiences in his soul, and then masterfully reproduce them in nature. Then a new century of glory will begin for Ronchamp, the Villa Savoye and the Marseille block, just as the century of revival of the Barcelona Pavilion, which had been in oblivion for many decades, has begun.