Notre-Dame-du-Haut

Le Corbusier’s pilgrimage chapel on a hill in eastern France is sculptural and free, far from his earlier straight lines. A heavy, curved concrete roof rests on thick white walls, and small windows of different sizes let in coloured light.

The chapel replaced a church destroyed in the Second World War. Le Corbusier was hesitant about working for the Church, but was given a free hand and in 1950–1955 built a chapel that has been called one of the most original buildings of the 20th century. He described it as a form responding to the landscape, “acoustics in the realm of form”.

Ronchamp shocked many modernists, who saw it as a betrayal of functionalist rationality. In fact it pointed to a path that many followed after the war: a more sculptural, expressive modernism, with concrete as a mouldable material. The chapel has been a World Heritage Site since 2016 together with other works by Le Corbusier, and in 2011 a convent by Renzo Piano was built on the slope below.

• Post-war modernism
• Le Corbusier