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19601965
19752003
20061971
ARCHITECTURE INTERRUPTUSWexner Center for the Arts
19601965
19752003
20061971
Eglise Saint-Pierre de Firminy-Vert
This publication accompanies the exhibition Architecture Interruptus Wexner Center for the Arts The Ohio State University January 26–April 15, 2007
CuratorMegan Cavanaugh Novak Curatorial Assistant Rachel Choto
Exhibition Designer Patrick Weber
Graphic Designer Wendy Qi
Architecture Interruptus was organized by the Wexner Center for the Arts. Major support is provided by Capgemini, NBBJ, and the Greater Columbus Arts Council.
The catalogue is made possible by a generous gift from Elise Jaffe and Jeffrey Brown. Additional support for the exhibition comes from Linda and Jim Miller, auto·des·sys, The Columbus Chapter of The American Institute of Architects, Robert and Sally Wandel, Merilynn and Tom Kaplin, Myers Financial Services LLC, the Corporate Annual Fund of the Wexner Center Foundation, and Wexner Center members.Accommodations are provided byThe Blackwell Inn.
Published by Wexner Center for the Arts The
Ohio State University 1871 North High Street Columbus, Ohio 43210-1393 USA Tel: +(614) 292-0330 Fax: +(614) 292-3369 www.wexarts.org © 2006 Wexner Center for the Arts The Ohio State University Library of Congress Control Number: 2006939610ISBN 10 Digits: 1-881390-42-X ISBN 13 Digits: 978-1-881390-42-8 Distributed by D.A.P. Distributed Art Publishers, Inc. 155 Sixth Avenue, 2nd Floor New York, New York 10013 USA Tel: +(212) 627-1999 / +(800) 338-2665 Fax: +(212) 627-9484 www.artbook.com
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director’s foreword introduction
15
4556drawings
construction
documentationgrandeur is in the
contents
a time for freedom
contemporary photographs
9josé oubreriecontemporary 2239
6273
86intentionhistorical
drawings
acknowledgments
1960 1965 1975 2003 20061971
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director’s forwordsherri geldin
If, as one leading critic proclaims,
the Eglise Saint-Pierre de Firminy-Vert is “almost
a triumph for Le Corbusier,” it is in any case
an unqualified triumph for José Oubrerie,
the architect who, against all odds, brought
the church to fruition some forty years
after it was begun. As a young apprentice
in Le Corbusier’s atelier, Oubrerie worked
closely on the church, only to see the
project founder upon the master’s death
in the mid-1960s. With only its concrete
foundation poured, the project remained
for decades relegated to preemptive
ruin—a poignant vestige of what had
never been and what might never be.
Meanwhile, Oubrerie established his own
reputation as a professor and an architect
with masterworks as the Miller House
in Kentucky and the French Cultural
Le Corbusier and José Oubrer ie
9
Center in Damascus, Syria. But he never
forgot the Firminy church; over time his
relationship to the project would transform
from an architectural to an existential
commitment. As Oubrerie writes,
What does it take to defy architectural historians, experts, Corbusian zealots or detractors...if not something which
was initiated in the 60s, born out of one of the constant dreams of one singular man who transferred the task
to one of his then assistants to continuously diminish the part of the unknown, to bring to existence this
thing which kept growing in the 70s to the point of being partially cast in concrete and became suddenly
frozen awake? What is it even more to be called upon three years ago to bring out of this long coma
such a project which did not want to die, having been strong enough by itself, by its own nature and its
antecedents, to resist demolition....
And herein lays both crux and crucible: a rare
convergence of supreme will, fortune, talent, and
tenacity that conjures from abandoned dreams a
concrete reality, despite improbable odds and rampant
skepticism in the academy of peers. For what does it
mean to posthumously complete the work of another,
especially when the other in question is long since
enshrined in the pantheon of architectural gods?
Moreover, how dare something at once aspire to the
historic and the contemporary? With what audacity
and cheek does the one-time apprentice take up the pen
and summon the redress of the master’s original design
intent, now proven ill-conceived?
10
This small church,
situated in the town
of Firminy about an
hour outside of Lyon,
was originally designed
by Le Corbusier in the
early 1960s. It was to be the
fourth in a suite of projects by
the famed architect in Firminy,
part of a visionary mayor’s civic plan
to create a new, green city out of a shabby
industrial town. After several iterations of the
design, which initially sprang from the unbuilt Le
Tremblay church project of 1929, Le Corbusier passed
The design itself also reflects a sense of “newness.” Although the outward “style” of the building might seem rooted in retired modernist or brutalist ideals, the ideas embedded in the project are still remarkably current.
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exhibition
nor the Firminy church is
just about Le Corbusier, or even just
about him and José Oubrerie. In fact, both
are undeniably more about the iterative process
of design, the compromises that are created
by people working together, the changes that
happen as new information arises during the
design process. These effects are magnified by
the incredible talent of the two architects and
the immense stretch of time that has extended
from the first breath of the project until its
eventual, emphatic completion more than forty
years later.
Although the Firminy church poses many
questions with no real answers, it is safe to
say that José Oubrerie was the driving force
behind the pages reserved for completed
projects, comes from him. As Anthony
Eardley details in his essay, first published in
1981 and reprinted here, Oubrerie became
intimately involved in the design of the church
as soon as Le Corbusier received the initial
commission in 1960. Aside from some of the
earliest sketches, many of the drawings from
Le Corbusier’s studio were actually penned
by Oubrerie while he worked there on the rue
away in 1965 before
the Firminy church had
even reached its final design stage,
much less been built. José Oubrerie, the
young apprentice working on the church with
Le Corbusier, picked up where his teacher left
off, and continued the evolution of the project’s
design. There were many fits and starts through
the design and the eventual construction of the
building, but today, the Firminy church stands tall,
a monument to Corbusier’s legacy and practice, and
to Oubrerie’s tenacity and persistence.
As you can probably imagine, the task of writing
about Le Corbusier and this “last” of his buildings
is fairly daunting. Luckily for me, neither this
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introductionmegan cavanaugh novak
In November 2006, the Eglise Saint-
Pierre de Firminy-Vert was finally
unveiled to the public... This small
church, situated in the town of Firminy
about an hour outside of Lyon, was
originally designed by Le Corbusier in
the early 1960s. It was to be the fourth in
a suite of projects by the famed architect
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19601965
19752003
20061971
in Firminy, part of a visionary mayor’s
civic plan to create a new, green city out
of a shabby industrial town. After several
iterations of the design, which initially sprang
from the unbuilt Le Tremblay church project
of 1929, Le Corbusier passed away in 1965
before the Firminy church had even reached
its final design stage, much less been built.
José Oubrerie, the young apprentice working
on the church with Le Corbusier, picked up
where his teacher left off, and continued the
evolution of the project’s design. There were
many fits and starts through the design and
the eventual construction of the building,
but today, the Firminy church stands tall, a
monument to Corbusier’s legacy and practice,
and to Oubrerie’s tenacity and persistence.
As you can probably imagine, the task of
writing about Le Corbusier and this “last” of
his buildings is fairly daunting. Luckily for
me, neither this exhibition nor the Firminy
church is just about Le Corbusier, or even
just about him and José Oubrerie. In fact,
14
of another, especially when the other in question is
long since enshrined in the pantheon of architectural
gods? Moreover, how dare something at once aspire
to the historic and the contemporary? With what
audacity and cheek does the one-time apprentice take
up the pen and summon the redress of the master’s
original design intent, now proven ill-conceived?
And how does one reconcile the ambiguity of authorship in a project that looms so large on the landscape of architectural history?
These are the questions we seek to probe in
presenting Architecture Interruptus at the Wexner
Center for the Arts. In doing so, we also honor
the unlikely accomplishment of José Oubrerie,
a colleague who for the last fifteen years has
contributed to the intellectual and creative energy
of Ohio State’s Knowlton School of Architecture as
professor, agitator, and mentor, even as he has lent
his talents to the Wexner Center as exhi- bition
designer and, more importantly, as devilish advocate
and interlocu- tor. That a former student, Megan
Cavanaugh Novak, eagerly assumed the role of
exhibition curator, and a long-time friend and
15
Knowlton School colleague, Jeffrey Kipnis, agreed
to contribute a critical essay to this catalogue is
testament to their keen regard for Oubrerie and his
talents. But make no mistake: this exhibition and
catalogue stand completely on their own merits, as
rigorously conceived and vetted as any the center
would undertake. In that regard, the Firminy
church uniquely and simultaneously embodies dual
but rarely convergent Wexner Center mandates: to
focus on newly created work in all disciplines and
to illuminate the historical context from which such
work emerges.
Here, in one project, we can at once illustrate
that which is quintessentially Corbusian and that
which bears the distinctive hand of Oubrerie circa
2006. Moreover, we are able to discern where the
one-time assistant has acted primarily as preserva-
tionist, and where he has deliberately reinterpreted
and even wholly reconceived crucial elements of
the design. As such, the church becomes a true
dialogue across the decades, not between teacher
and student, but between peers. And one has to
surmise that Le Corbusier would deem his legacy
well served.
This was by no means an easy project on which
to cut one’s curato- rial teeth, and I would like to
recognize the fine work done by Megan Cavanaugh
Novak to orchestrate every aspect of this exhibition
and its accompanying catalogue. She joins me in expressing our abiding
appreciation to the Fondation Le Corbusier for its generous cooperation
in lending precious historical material to the show. We also thank the
Musée d’Art Moderne de Saint-Etienne Métropole, and the Centre
Canadien d’Architecture Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montréal, for
their kind assistance in lending works.
Similarly, we both convey our thanks to Romain
Chazalon, who has worked closely with Oubrerie over
the last several years to bring the church to completion,
and also assisted in planning the exhibition. We are
grateful to Jeffrey Kipnis for his keen insights and
suggestions along the way, in addition to his sweeping
yet meticulously honed essay for this catalogue. I
thank Helen Molesworth for her project oversight
and the entire Wexner Center exhibitions team for
their significant contributions to the realization of the
project, particularly Patrick Weber, the lead ex- hibition
designer for the show. I would also like to express my
thanks to Wendy Qi, our guest graphic designer, for
his superb visualization of this publication and several
related materials, and to Editor Ann Bremner for her
always graceful and sensitive ministrations to text. We
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are delighted that Luis Burriel Bielza was able to
visit the church upon its completion and provide
entirely new photographs for this catalogue.
For their dedicated efforts to raise both awareness
and funding for the exhibition, I’m proud to
recognize the center’s marketing and commu-
nications department under the leadership of Jerry
Dannemiller and its development department, led
by Jeffrey Byars. Under the strategic guidance of
Deputy Director Jack Jackson, they (and so much
else at the center) flourish. I am blessed with a
supremely creative and dedicated staff, as well as a
cadre of devoted volunteers, and while they more
than deserve individual recognition, this collective
expression of thanks will have to suffice for the
moment. Similarly, I am exceedingly fortunate to
have a Board of Trustees that is unparalleled in the
country for its stead- fast commitment to the not-
always-easy mission of being a laboratory for the
contemporary arts. For their unwavering support
and encourage- ment, I salute them.
The center’s trustees join me in recognizing those
generous individual and corporate donors who
have made Architecture Interruptus pos- sible.
We are enormously grateful to Capgemini, NBBJ,
and the Greater Columbus Arts Council for
their significant commitments of support to this
endeavor. In addition, I express my profound
appreciation to national architecture patrons Elise
Jaffe and Jeffrey Brown, whose splendid
gift made this publication possible. I am also
pleased to acknowledge additional exhibition
support from Linda and Jim Miller, auto•des•sys,
The Columbus Chapter of The American Institute
of Architects, Robert and Sally Wandel, Merilynn
and Tom Kaplin, Myers Financial Services LLC, the
Blackwell Inn, the Corporate Annual Fund of the
Wexner Center Foundation, and Wexner Center
members.
Finally, I express my utmost esteem, affection and
appreciation to José Oubrerie, whose conviction
and tenacity have kept the Eglise Saint- Pierre
a vital (if dormant) force for so many years.
“Today,” he notes, “as a new phoenix, the ugly
lost object has transformed itself...into a powerful
sculpture whose outside convexity reorganizes its
surroundings and inside concavity reorganizes our
feelings and thoughts.” No small feat indeed, and
inconceivable without Oubrerie’s respectful yet
radical intervention.
José Oubrerie’s comments appear in “Folio: 500 Words for 45
Years,” Cornell Architecture, Art, Planning NEWS01 (Fall 2006),
p. 21.
Eglise Saint-Pierre de Firminy-Vertddddd
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Eglise Saint-Pierre de Firminy-Vertddddd
contemporar y photographs
exter ior,detail of gutter system
exter ior,detail of gutter system
inter ior,detail of pulpit
stairs in sanctuary
contemporar y drawings
east façade
mass plan
30
grandeur is the intentionanthony eardley
31
1975 2003 20061971
Firminy is a mining, steel, and textiles town of
some 25,000 people in the southern Auvergne.
It lies in an undulating landscape at the head
of a narrow region sprawling from the Rhone
through St. Etienne, blackened with smoke
and soot, and containing some half a million
people. In the nineteenth century it was
the scene of feverish industrial activity.
In 1914 Baedeker’s guide to Southern
France afforded Firminy’s urban and
architectural heritage just two lines of
text; the remaining two lines advised the
visitor as to the means of transportation
to somewhere else.1 However, it is not
this jerry-built and unsanitary old fabric,
shaken by mining subsidence and reduced
to rubble in the frenzy of European postwar
urban renewal, but rather the adjacent
“green” Firminy which contains the last of
Le Corbusier’s buildings to be realized, the parish
church of Saint-Pierre de Firminy-Vert.2
This last work was actually commissioned in the
spring of 1960. Le Corbusier undertook it with
reluctance, and serious misgivings, which were
overcome only through his deep friendship for the
mayor of Firminy, Eugène Claudius-Petit. Indeed,
even the Parish Association commissioned the
work with some apprehension, for despite the
encouraging impetus of the radical transformations
suddenly taking place about them in a town which
had been “practically abandoned by municipal
officials of every political color for half a century,”3
they found themselves ill-equipped to assume the
32
22LeCorbusier,Aircraft;L’avionaccuse... (London: The Studio, Ltd. 1935), p. 95.
23 Ibid., p. 96. 24 Mise au point, op. cit., pp. 59–61. 25 Paul Turner, in his invaluable study of The Educa-tion of Le Corbusier observes that in his reading of Ernest Renan’s Vie de Jesus during the period 1908–1909, the young Charles-Edouard Jean-neret marked passages which “reveal the rather startling fact that Jean-neret actually identified himself with the figure of Jesus, and was seeking parallels between Jesus’ career and that which he himself was embark-ing upon...Indeed, Jeanneret seems to have read Nietzsche (Zarathustra) and Renan together, seeking out in both books the traits of the arche-typal revolutionary prophet and reformer—and then relating these traits to his image of his own similar destiny.” Paul Venable Turner, The Educationof Le Corbusier (New York: Garland Publishing Inc., 1977), pp. 62, 64.
27LeCorbusier,Oeuvrecomplète1946– 1952, op. cit., p. 25.
28 Le Corbusier lui-même, Jean Petit, editor (Geneva: Editions Rousseau, 1970), p. 100. Apart from the secular aspects of this pro-posal it is clear that Le Corbusier’s ciconsotganratprheyc,oausrsies
etovipdaegnat,nfor enxaatmurpale, in Ronchamp, was a constant source of distress to the ecclesiastical authorities. While it is impossible to identify the full panoply of references and stimuli, it is pcroasbs-isbhleltloacnldaiamircthraft-tiwn iandgdwitihoinchtoshthaeped the roof, other memories permeated the form of Firminy-Vert. Among these one may select the old Greek colony in Archachon, danradwAnmwéidthéepO-rozteon-Pfaunritsitnstuhbetlseutymb-myehrimofself 1918 (Le Corbusier, Une maison—un palais: A la recherche d’une unité architecturale, Paris: Cres, 1928, p. 47); the Serapeum at the Villa Adriana, Tivoli, already evoked 71 in connection with the light shafts for La Sainte-Baume (Le Corbusier, Oeuvre complète 1946–1952, p. 31); the megalithic Ggantija (Giant’s Tower) on the Maltese island of Gozo (Une mai-son—un palais, p. 39); elements of the Arab cities of Ghardaia and the Mizab (Le Corbusier, Radiant City, New York, 1967, pp. 230–233), and African cer-
33
emonial masks which he had studied in the Trocadero in his youth (L’Esprit Nouveau nos. 21, 22, see “Nègres” by Julian Sant- Quetin).
29 “Le Corbusier and the Theological Program,” op. cit., p. 291.
30 Some indications as the reasons for his refusal are contained in his response to Karel Teige’s criticism of the Mundaneum project of that period when he replied, “You say ‘needs pose programs: factories, railway stations, and not churches or palaces; at the present time, nothing can become ar-chitecture which is not dictated by so-cial and economic needs.’ I have never believed, nor written anything else; and to show you the subtlety which can animate this belief, let me tell you that last year I refused, very politely, to build a very big church, even though I was authorized to apply the most modern methods to the project. I felt
that reinforced concrete simply couldn’t become a true expression of a Catholic cult, which is formed by the dense stratification of secular usages which derive their vitality as much from the form that has been conferred vupon them as from the principle, and which our memory has retained.” See Kerel Tiege, “Mundaneum,” originally published in Stavba no.7 (Prague, 1928–1929), pp. 145–155. Translated in full by Ladislav and Elizabeth Holovsky and Lubamir Dolezel in Opposi-tions 4 (New York: October 1974), pp. 83–91. See also Le Corbusier, “In Defense of Architecture.” This article was written in 1929 in response to the Teige attack cited above, and was intended for publication in Stavba. It first appeared in French in L’Architecture d’aujourd’hui (Paris, 1933), and is published in full in Oppositions 4, pp. 92–108, trans-lated by Nancy Bray, André Les-sard, Alan Levitt, and George Baird. My version of this passage differs slightly from theirs.
31 Stanislaus von Moos, Le Corbusier; Elements of a Synthesis (Cambridge, Massachusetts: M.I.T. Press, 1979), p. 258.32 “Le Corbusier et son atelier rue de Sèvres 35,” Oeuvre complète 1952–1957, p. 94.
33 NormaEvenson,Chandigarh(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966), p. 82. 34 Le Corbusier, intro-duction to The development by Le
34
Corbusier of the Designfor L’Eglise de Firminy, a church in France, Keller Smith Jr. and Reyhan Tansal, editors(University of North Carolina at Raleigh: Student Publications, vol.14, 1964), p. 5.
35LeCorbusierhadanacutedistastefor the clutter of extensive church seating: “They can get down on their knees, the Good Lord is quite entitled to that! Because all these types sit in the churches, including Notre Dame, (and) I don’t agree at all!” Le Corbusier lui-même, p. 184. In the end, of course, he was to lose this battle at Firminy as a result of the necessity to warp the church floor up and over the day chapel in order to accommodate the congregation in a reduced floor area, thus making safety barriers, and hard seating essential.
36 Several significantly conflicting dates are recorded for the site visit, but I believe we can rely on the date Le Corbusier indicated on his sketches.37“Notesurl’implantation,”op.cit.,p.3.
38 “Le Corbusier and the Theological Program,” op. cit., p. 309.39 Le Corbusier, “The Mosques” in Le Voyage d’Orient (Paris:
Forces Vives, 1966). 40LeCorbusier,“Quandlescathédralesétaient blanches,” Plan (Paris, 1937), pp. 33–35.
Levitt, and George Baird. My version of this passage differs slightly from theirs.
31 Stanislaus von Moos, Le Corbusier; Elements of a Synthesis (Cambridge, Massachusetts: M.I.T. Press, 1979), p. 258.32 “Le Corbusier et son atelier rue de Sèvres 35,” Oeuvre complète 1952–1957, p. 94.
33 NormaEvenson,Chandigarh(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966), p. 82. 34 Le Corbusier, introduction to The development by Le Corbusier of the Designfor L’Eglise de Firminy, a church in France, Keller Smith Jr. and Reyhan Tansal, editors(University of North Carolina at Raleigh: Student Publications, vol.14, 1964), p. 5.
35
30 Some indications as the reasons for his refusal are contained in his response to Karel Teige’s criticism of the Mundaneum project of that period when he replied, “You say ‘needs pose programs: factories, railway stations, and not churches or palaces; at the present time, nothing can become architecture which is not dictated by social and economic needs.’ I have never believed, nor written anything else; and to show you the subtlety which can animate this belief, let me tell you that last year I refused, very politely, to build a very big church, even though I was authorized to apply the most mod-ern methods to the project. I felt that reinforced concrete simply couldn’t become a true expression of a Catho-lic cult, which is formed by the dense stratification of secular usages which derive their vitality as much from the form that has been conferredupon them as from the prin-
ciple, and which our memory has retained.” See Kerel Tiege, “Mun-daneum,” originally published in Stavba no.7 (Prague, 1928–1929), pp. 145–155. Translated in full by Ladislav and Elizabeth Holovsky and Lubamir Dolezel in Opposi-tions 4 (New York: October 1974), pp. 83–91. See also Le Corbusier, “In Defense of Architecture.” This article was written in 1929 in response to the Teige attack cited above, and was intended for publication in Stavba. It first appeared in French in L’Architecture d’aujourd’hui (Paris, 1933), and is published in full in Oppositions 4, pp. 92–108, trans-lated by Nancy Bray, André Les-sard, Alan Levitt, and George Baird. My version of this passage differs slightly from theirs.
31 Stanislaus von Moos, Le Corbusier; Elements of a Synthesis (Cambridge, Massachusetts: M.I.T. Press, 1979), p. 258.32 “Le Corbusier et son atelier rue de Sèvres 35,” Oeuvre complète 1952–1957, p. 94.
33 NormaEvenson,Chandigarh(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966), p. 82. 34 Le Corbusier, intro-duction to The development by Le Corbusier of the Designfor L’Eglise de Firminy, a church in France, Keller Smith Jr. and Reyhan Tansal, editors(University of North Carolina at Ra-leigh: Student Publications, vol.14, 1964), p. 5.
histor ica l drawings
inter ior,detail of pulpit stairs in sanctuary
inter ior,detail of pulpit
stairs in sanctuary
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Wexner Center for the ArtsThe Ohio State University