Sainte Marie de La Tourette, (Lyon France); 1959 Jiahao Wang

Name: Sainte Marie de La Tourette
Architect: Le Corbusier
Time: 1959

Sainte Marie de La Tourette is located near Lyon France. It was built on the side of a hill. The building was designed by the very famous architect Le Corbusier.  Sainte Marie de La Tourette is Le Corbusier’s most recognized work and it was also his last masterpiece of his architect life. He started to design the building from 1951 and completed the whole design 8 years later.
Because Sainte Marie de La Tourette is a Dominican Order priory, the committee which decided to create the architecture had some thoughts. They thought that as a monastery, Sainte Marie de La Tourette should serve as a spiritual guide for the people live in the area. This was why Sainte Marie de La Tourette was located in a place where people got easy access to from Lyon. It was not far for people from Lyon to drive or take the train to the monastery.
Sainte Marie de La Tourette was recognized as UNESCO World Heritage Sites in July 2016. It was famous because of its outstanding exterior and interior design. From the outside, the building looks like a rectangular closed space. It was extremely impact and simple. The function of the building was to serve the teacher and students. So there were studying room, working office, library, restaurant and entertainment room. It was hard to tell from the outside that such an impact outlook could contain 100 bedrooms. The temple and restaurant were located underground at the very bottom while the study room, office and entertainment room were on the ground floor. It was like a mysterious closed place surrounded by four wings of the monastery.
The courtyard was also very special. It was not just a space between the four wings. There were two vertical corridors crossing each other which divides the courtyard into four parts. The four parts each has different constitutions.

The designer mainly used reinforced concrete to build Sainte Marie de La Tourette. The use of light in the building is also worth mentioning. Even though it looks like a closed place from the outside, the designer maximized the use of natural light.
Sainte Marie de La Tourette is still functioning these days. However, the function has changed from serving teacher and students of the monastery to a world famous studying model for architecture students. To help maintain the condition of the building, the rooms in the building are open to book for visitors.
Sainte Marie de La Tourette has become such a well know studying model for architects from all over the world largely because of the designer- Le Corbusier. He has a great influence on the international architecture industry. Le Corbusier was a Swiss city planner. From the building he designed, he tried very hard to emphasize the function part of the architect. He was one of the first generation of the so-called world class architect with international conception. Le Corbusier’s extreme talent in architecture design made Sainte Marie de La Tourette a world class success and left a unforgettable remark in the architect history.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sainte_Marie_de_La_Tourette

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