Beauty and the brutalist

A chance to visit a church near Lyon designed by famed French architect Le Corbusier was too much to miss, writes HUGO ARNOLD

I FIND great churches irresistible. I never go to a service, God has passed me by, or me him. But give me a great church and I’m all ears and eyes. I sit in wonder. I love the space, the majesty, maybe it is simply the sheer scale, or picking up on the belief that surrounds me. When an outing to Sainte Marie de La Tourette outside Lyon for mass was suggested recently, I froze.

The chance to visit one of Le Corbusier’s buildings was a huge attraction, but mass felt odd. It wasn’t the lack of Catholic faith that deterred me, more the juxtaposition of usage and observation. I shouldn’t have worried. We drove from Lyon through autumn sunshine, the surrounding hills and valleys, radiant with late-summer heat and faded colours. Church on Sunday dominated my early years, this was an adventure. A monastery by one of the leading lights of modern architecture.

La Tourette, completed in 1957, nestles into the hillside, its brutalist rough concrete lending texture and presence to a group of buildings that sit in a grass-strewn valley. The trees seem to float around it, the hillside seems to flow through the buildings.

The church is a huge void, concrete clad, brutal and unforgiving and yet there is a softness. If you come from the monastery side the entrance is through a massive steel cantilevered door. The lighting is dramatic, but almost absent. A small angled floor-to-ceiling wall of glass is set in one end and behind the pews tiny thin horizontal windows are sloped into the concrete so the light is forced downwards. The off-set transept with its angled skylights also provides some shafts of light, but these are barely enough.

Still we adjusted to the gloom and after a while it only served to reveal the space in a more dramatic way. Outside was all wind and sunshine, inside was all calm serenity. The congregation shuffled in, the music started, a lone woman singing up and into the space, encouraging us all to join in.

I am no Le Corbusier expert. While I marvel at photographs of Villa Savoye I struggle with Unité d’Habitation in Marseilles like so many others. But standing in the church of La Tourette it is hard if not impossible to be impressed. In my case hugely so.

And the greatness goes on. After mass we edged further into the monastery. Climbing the ramp up out of the church what strikes you is not the view, but the windows looking into the courtyard. Irregularly divided according to Le Corbusier’s modulor system of proportions, an approach designed by Iannis Xenakis, a musician as well as an architect who applied musical principles of harmony and rhythm.

These windows, they come at you again in the refectory, a room that offers sweeping views of the parkland below. Their logic is a puzzle but they do seem to bring a sense of peace. We didn’t stay to eat, instead climbing further to inspect the library and finally the monks’ cells. Small spaces, but each with a balcony and view out to the forest and parkland.

We visited at the end of last year. Extensive restoration work has been completed with windows replaced and concrete repaired. Massively ahead of his time, Le Corbusier’s creation suffered hugely from materials that simply were not able to live up to his vision.

But while for the last 20 or 30 years I am sure many visitors would have wondered what this collection of sad and tired buildings was all about, the expensive restoration has brought the buildings back to life. You can, for a few hours or even a few days, live in it and really see what all the fuss is about.

La Tourette was Le Corbusier’s last major work in Europe, a complete self-contained world designed to bring silence and peace. Its beauty for me exists inside, its relationship of internal space to the sweeping outside. Despite many practical reservations about the building – insulation, sound proofing, acoustics and the size of the monks’ cells chief among them – this is a glorious way to spend a Sunday morning. I headed back into Lyon inspired, invigorated and decidedly at peace.

* You can visit and even stay at La Tourette, which is 25km northwest of Lyon. You can get there by train and taxi. For more information see couventlatourette.com or tel 00-33-474267970. We stayed at the Cours des Loge (courdesloges.com) in the centre of Lyon which has beautiful rooms surrounding a covered courtyard.