ABSTRACT
The Dominican Monastery of Sainte-Marie de La Tourette was completed in 1960 and is Le Corbusier’s last completed building in Europe. Like much of his late work, it is made almost entirely of bare-shuttered concrete, known widely as Béton Brut and from which the architectural term Brutalist is derived. The cloister window discussed here shares this tectonic but forms a completely separate and individual character to the rest of the monastery, sitting raised on piloti, within the confines of the open space that is formed by the enclosure of the four outward-facing wings of the building. The floor-to-soffit glass is divided, through its vertical concrete fins, into near and far rhythms that catch the direct sunlight in bands of constantly changing shadow that ripple across the surface of the polished floor, as the strong sunlight assumes a near-liquid intensity. The friars descending the ramp within provide an additional layer of unscored movement and, of all Corbusier’s buildings, this is the one that most attempts to address the stark relationship of a spiritual life laid bare, using the fundamental conditions of sunlight and shade.
