With the ever changing status of the trans Tasman travel bubble and New Zealand’s ongoing isolation from the rest of the world, it can feel at times as if we may never be able to jet off overseas again as we once did. So while you shelter from the winter storms and dream of holidays north of the equator, let us show you some of France’s lesser known architectural wonders.
Church of Saint-Pierre
in Firminy
The last major work of famed modernist architect and urban planner Le Corbusier, the Church of Saint-Pierre appears more closely related to a Jedi temple than a traditional French chapel. Situated within the neighbourhood of Firminy-Vert in the town of Firminy, the Church of Saint-Pierre is one of four buildings designed by the renowned architect as part of an urban renewal project that took place after the Second World War in an attempt to address the town’s housing and public needs.
Images — Richard WEIL
Once a simple neighbourhood parish, Notre Dame du Raincy came into being at the end of the First World War when the parish priest, Felix Negre, proposed building a new church to commemorate the French lives lost at the Battle of the Marne. Through connections in his congregation, Negre was able to contract the Perret brothers, Auguste and Gustave, to build his church but stipulated that they were on a tight budget.
An experienced pair born to a Belgian stonemason, the Perrets initially trained in architecture in their family firm and at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, where they would spend most of their professional life.
Though still relatively early in their careers, the brothers had already won acclaim for their design of the Theatres des Champs-Elysees, a design with the distinction of being the first Art Deco building in Paris, signifying both a radical departure from the filigreed excesses of the Art Nouveau style and a clear new vision for the 20th century. Notre Dame du Raincy emerged from this new style as a fully realised example of what Art Deco could be, it’s tiered bell tower appearing as a diminutive predecessor to the Empire State Building, the geometric tessellations in its facade offering a restrained response to the ornamentation of Art Nouveau.
Inside, the grandiosity that was for centuries a hallmark of European cathedrals is stripped away in favour of a simple barrel vaulted ceiling supported on slender columns and a wide rectangular nave. Dark, claustrophobic alcoves are banished and replaced with a flood of light in bright yellow and the richest blue, a feature that acknowledges the tradition of stained glass while eschewing its stuffiness, and was achieved by inserting hundreds of coloured glass panels into the fenestrations that puncture the church’s walls.
The overall impression of du Raincy is that of a truly era defining shift in architecture, a building that marries the material strength and precision of a newly industrialised world with the dignity of the old, a church that is able to meld the traditions of its form with a vision of the future; modern, elegant, familiar and sacrosanct, and all without a single stonemason.
Notre Dame du Raincy
In Le Raincy
In the east of Paris lies the suburb of Le Raincy, a small administrative municipality that is home to 13,000 people and, like so many other neighbourhoods in Paris, a church. As French churches go, this one is neither very old nor very large, and so may not seem very impressive when compared with its peers across the city, but it does hold the distinction of being the first church in France to be built of a rather unceremonious material: concrete.
Image — Philippe MOULU
Though the first stone was laid in 1971, six years after Corbusier’s death, construction did not truly begin until 1973 before being completely abandoned in 1978, leaving the shell of the church to languish for over 20 years.
In 2002, it was declared that the Church was of interest to the local community, who raised the necessary funds for its completion under the supervision of Corbusier’s former student, José Oubrerie.
Built entirely from concrete, Corbusier introduces levity to the hulking structure through a split level construction that positions a truncated curvilinear cone atop a square base, while lightboxes and a series of perforations in the form of the constellation Orion along the eastern wall illuminate the spartan interior in such a way as to retain the dim solemnity of its religious roots.
Words — Nick Ainge-Roy
