Ronchamp
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Commune of Ronchamp Notre Dame du Haut in Rounchamp |
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| Location | |
| Longitude | 06° 38' 02" E |
| Latitude | 47° 42' 03" N |
| Administration | |
|---|---|
| Country | France |
| Région | Franche-Comté |
| Département | Haute-Saône |
| Arrondissement | Lure |
| Canton | Champagney |
| Intercommunality | Communauté de communes Rahin et Chérimont |
| Mayor | Raymond Massinger (2001-2008) |
| Statistics | |
| Altitude | 320 m–790 m (avg. 353 m) |
| Land area¹ | 23.54 km² |
| Population² (1999) |
2,965 |
| - Density (1999) | 125/km² |
| Miscellaneous | |
| INSEE/Postal code | 70451/ 70250 |
| ¹ French Land Register data, which excludes lakes, ponds, glaciers > 1 km² (0.386 sq. mi. or 247 acres) and river estuaries. | |
| ² Population sans doubles comptes: single count of residents of multiple communes (e.g. students and military personnel). | |
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Ronchamp is a town and commune in the Haute-Saône département of northeastern France.
[edit] Notre Dame du Haut
Main article: Notre Dame du Haut
The chapel of Notre Dame du Haut, designed by Le Corbusier, is located in Ronchamp. The Chapelle Notre-Dame-du-Haut, a shrine for the Catholic Church at Ronchamp, France was built for a reformist Church looking to continue its relevancy. Warning against decadence, reformers within the Church looked to renew its spirit by embracing modern art and architecture as representative concepts. Father Couturier, who would also sponsor Le Corbusier for the La Tourette commission, steered the unorthodox project to completion in 1954.
This is a singular work in Corbusier’s oeuvre, in that it departs from his principles of standardisation and the machine aesthetic, giving in instead to a site-specific response. By Le Corbusier’s own admission, it was the site that provided an irresistible genius loci for the response, with the horizon visible on all four sides of the hill and its historical legacy for centuries as a place of worship.
This historical legacy weaved in different layers into the terrain – from the Romans and sun-worshippers before them, to a cult of the Virgin in the Middle Ages, right through to the modern church and the fight against the German occupation. Le Corbusier also sensed a sacral relationship of the hill with its surroundings – the Jura mountains in the distance and the hill itself, dominating the landscape.
The nature of the site would result in an architectural ensemble that has many similitudes with the Acropolis – starting from the ascent at the bottom of the hill to architectural and landscape events along the way, before finally terminating at the sanctum sanctorum itself – the chapel.
The building itself is a comparatively small structure enclosed by thick walls, with the upturned roof supported on columns embedded within the walls. In the interior, the spaces left between the wall and roof, as wells as asymmetric light from the wall openings serve to further reinforce the sacral nature of the space and buttress the relationship of the building with its surroundings.
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