Threshold
Approaching along the leafy lane from the car park the blank wall of the Church, flanked by a much lower piano-shaped saddlebag of chapels, is the first part of the monastery to become visible in what Rowe describes as “some very private commentary upon Acropolitan material”
( Fig. 7.37).
37
The Church itself has two
sides and two entrances: one for the monks within, and one for the public without. As the reader rounds the corner of the Church, the angular thrust of the belfry comes into view. Here the fondness for anthropomorphism so evident at Ronchamp comes once more into play. Woman is evoked in the gable of the Church where she extends her cape over the gathered flock as in Piero della Francesca’s Madonna della Misericordia (1462)
( Fig. 7.38)
or indeed the veiled woman that appears so frequently in his work, for example in the
“labyrinth” section of Le poème de l’angle droit
( Fig. 2.21),
but she is left behind by the reader progressing
steadily onwards. Le Corbusier, when at Mount Athos as a young man, dwelt on the impossibility of an existence without women – “thus everything is missing here in the East where only for the sight of her woman is the primordial ingredient”.38 The theme then in the approach to La Tourette seems to me to be the relinquishing of the body, of human love, in favour of a more spiritual union, the difficulties of which receive further expression in the design of the entrance. An early model of the building shows a wall along the alley, on the East side of the building, blocking views of the internal cloister. This would mean that the reader would have to walk a good way without much to look at before arriving at the portal that marks the entry into the complex, in this way heightening expectation of what is to come
( Fig. 7.39).
Le Corbusier’s buildings often went over budget – the source of funds for La
Tourette being particularly restricted – the likely reason for the wall not being built to full height. Its absence makes the choreography of views en route into the building more chaotic than usual causing what Colin Rowe calls the lack of “preface” to the composition. If built as originally intended, the open portal would be set, like the doors in so many of Le Corbusier’s buildings, within a taut horizontal band of wall protecting the space within. As it is, the composition does feel odd. Sensitising Vestibule
The power of the open portal is reinforced by the contours of the land, meaning that it gives onto a space that is, in essence, a bridge spanning between two very different forms of existence
( Fig. 7.40).
In the floor a
grating for the cleaning of shoes spans only half the width of the frame, as if waiting for a single file procession of monks. It is this – like so many of the spaces of monastic existence – both open to the air and under cover, that marks the vestibule of the building. The area protruding beyond the shade of the block is in essence a square, as is the space beneath it ( Fig. 7.41), the pure form conferring a greater authority on the space than something more irregular. This vestibule space is occupied by a range of five extraordinary biomorphic pavilions that house the porter’s lodge, the opulent curves of which are finished in a deep mottled gunnite plaster, similar to that of Ronchamp. Number five, as was mentioned in chapter 3, corresponds to the five senses. Lighting is brought into these bulbous forms through slots of red, which, as was seen in the previous
188
37 Colin Rowe, “La Tourette” in The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa (Cambridge MA: MIT, 1976), p.186. 38 Le Corbusier, Journey to the East (Cambridge MA: MIT, 1987), p.206. Originally published as Le Voyage d’Orient (Paris: Parenthèses, 1887).