From the City to the Building 'Approaches to Modernity' la Tourette as a Landmark

The architectural and urbanistic practices have always been linked with society and the epoch in which they occur. The arrival of modernism brought about changes in the production of architecture and spatial planning, in the manner in which they are projected. On the one hand, the building practices were changed due to the introduction of concrete and pillar, the crossbeam and the slab system, which became an omnipresent duality (architecture vs structure) in modernist architecture. On the other hand, the aspects of space and nature gained a new dimension in terms of urbanistic practices, with the Charter of Athens, focusing on the housing question and the urban regeneration. The medieval monastic heritage was able to inspire artists and architects to produce new works and to find the missing link between the truth of the medieval stone work and the modernist concrete work, in its most straightforward way: apparent concrete. A landmark of this tendency is the project of a convent by Le Corbusier that was inspired by his visits in 1907 to the Charterhouse of Ema, in Italy; and in 1953 to the Cistercian monastery of Le Thoronet, in France. In 1952 the proposal was made to him to design the Dominican Convent of Sainte Marie de La Tourette, Éveux-sur- Arbresle, in France. This project represented the opportunity for Le Corbusier to put in practice a new approach towards modernity based on the idea of collective forms of life. This article aims to give a view about the process related to the project of La Tourette, characterized by a modernism of a ‘béton brut’, so strong in Le Corbusier’s work.