Don’t You Wish You Were There?
The Église Saint-Pierre is the only building that was never finished after Le Corbusier’s death. In fact, it was pretty much left just half constructed, with exposed steel bars – for 20 odd years. After 25 years of effort by one of his former students, that one unfinished building is now finally getting completed.
When the church is finished, it will be the third religious building built by Le Corbusier. The other two are the Convent of La Tourette and Notre-Dame du Haut in Ronchamp. This is a really big deal because the town of Firminy-Vert will then officially exceed Chandigarh in having the highest concentration of Le Corbusien work. As a university student, my father visited Chandigarh and got deeply inspired there. So to see Firminy-Vert means a lot to me.
Eglise Saint Pierre. Can’t get in because it is a construction site.
Maison de la Culture. The interior is quite small in reality. The angled wall must have really exaggerated its size.
Unité d’Habitation. The last of five Unités. This is the biggest of them all, with 400 individual homes because all the apartments are single storey.
The Fourth Le Corbusier Building
