Ronchamp

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Coordinates: 47°42′03″N 6°38′02″E / 47.70083, 6.63389

Commune of Ronchamp

Notre Dame du Haut in Rounchamp

Location

Coordinates

47°42′03″N 6°38′02″E / 47.70083, 6.63389

Administration

Champagney

Communauté de communes Rahin et Chérimont

Mayor

Raymond Massinger
(2001-2008)

Statistics

Elevation

320 m–790 m
(avg. 353 m)

Land area^¹

23.54 km²

Population^²
(1999)

2,965

- Density

125/km² (1999)

Miscellaneous

INSEE/Postal code

70451/ 70250

¹ French Land Register data, which excludes lakes, ponds, glaciers > 1 km² (0.386 sq mi or 247 acres) and river estuaries.

² Population sans doubles comptes: residents of multiple communes (e.g. students and military personnel) only counted once.

The road into Ronchamp

Ronchamp is a town and commune in the Haute-Saône département of eastern France.

1 Demographics
2 Notre Dame du Haut
3 See also
4 References
5 External links

[edit] Demographics

As of the census of 1999, the population was 2,965.
The estimation for 2006 was 2,924.

[edit] 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.