Ronchamp

French commune
nomcommune=Ronchamp


caption=Notre Dame du Haut in Ronchamp


x=216
y=107
lat_long=coord|47|42|03|N|6|38|02|E|region:FR_type:city
région=Franche-Comté
département=Haute-Saône
arrondissement=Lure
canton=Champagney
insee=70451
cp=70250
maire=Raymond Massinger
mandat=2001-2008
intercomm=Communauté de communes Rahin et Chérimont
alt moy=353 m
alt mini=320 m
alt maxi=790 m
hectares=2,354
km²=23.54
sans=2,965
date-sans=1999
dens=125
date-dens=1999

Ronchamp is a town and commune in the Haute-Saône "département" of eastern France, located right between the Vosges and the Jura mountains. Its name comes maybe from the words "rond" (round) and "champ" (field), whose spelling evolved during the Middle-Ages.

Demographics

As of the census of 1999, the population was formatnum:2965.
The estimation for 2006 was formatnum:2924.

Notre Dame du Haut

"Main article: Notre Dame du Haut"

The chapel of Notre Dame du Haut, designed by Le Corbusier, is located in Ronchamp.The Chapelle Notre-Dame-du-Haut, a shrine for the Catholic Church at Ronchamp, France was built for a reformist Church looking to continue its relevancy. Warning against decadence, reformers within the Church looked to renew its spirit by embracing modern art and architecture as representative concepts. Father Couturier, who would also sponsor Le Corbusier for the La Tourette commission, steered the unorthodox project to completion in 1954.

This work, like several others in Le Corbusier’s late oeuvre, departs from his principles of standardization and the machine aesthetic outlined in "Vers un architecture". It is interesting to note though, that even in this project, the structural design of the roof was inspired by the engineering of airfoils.

The chapel is clearly a site-specific response. By Le Corbusier’s own admission, it was the site that provided an irresistible genius loci for the response, with the horizon visible on all four sides of the hill and its historical legacy for centuries as a place of worship.

This historical legacy weaved in different layers into the terrain – from the Romans and sun-worshippers before them, to a cult of the Virgin in the Middle Ages, right through to the modern church and the fight against the German occupation. Le Corbusier also sensed a sacral relationship of the hill with its surroundings – the Jura mountains in the distance and the hill itself, dominating the landscape.

The nature of the site would result in an architectural ensemble that has many similitudes with the Acropolis – starting from the ascent at the bottom of the hill to architectural and landscape events along the way, before finally terminating at the sanctum sanctorum itself – the chapel.

The building itself is a comparatively small structure enclosed by thick walls, with the upturned roof supported on columns embedded within the walls. In the interior, the spaces left between the wall and roof, as well as asymmetric light from the wall openings serve to further reinforce the sacral nature of the space and buttress the relationship of the building with its surroundings.

ee also

*Communes of the Haute-Saône department

References

* [http://www.insee.fr/en/home/home_page.asp INSEE] en icon
* [http://www.ign.fr/rubrique.asp?rbr_id=1&lng_id=EN IGN] en icon

External links

* [http://www.ronchamp.org Officiel website] fr icon
* [http://www.westfordconnection.com/Photos/France/ronchamp/index.htm Minosh Photography] en icon