La Iglesia de Firminy y la machine à émouvoir de Le Corbusier

Abstract

The Firminy Church and the machine à émouvoir of Le Corbusier The revolutionary concept of machine à habiter (the machine for living in) is complemented by the need for communicating and coexists with the machine à émouvoir (the affecting machine). Le Corbusier borrows traditional shapes, abstracts them, decomposes them, and remodels their formal and functional relations; he creates a striking and innovative architecture where evocative messages underlie. Firminy Church is a good example of the use of these mechanisms and of the moving effectiveness of the machine appropriations brought about by Le Corbusier. We identify recognizable shapes, their dismantling, their relocation and their deliberate remodeling; the anamorphosis is created, a new vision is offered, maintaining its evocative power and its recognizable quality. The architect undertakes a tough and radical alteration of the original syntax of these shapes as a mechanism to elide traditional languages. The shape of the church evokes a recognizable iconography, a dome without drum that, outside, stands on a quadrangular stylobate that forms the ground floor and holds the support services and spaces. The formal articulation is outlined by placing the icon of the dome on the functional and domestic stylobate. Concrete transforms the construction into an origami exercise; the truncated cone abstracts traditional shapes and manages the anamorphosis of the square base into a three-dimensional volume generated by the folded concrete surface. Inside, and unlike tradition, the space is not crowned by the dome; the dome is itself the space: it rises directly from the ground and holds the pews. This new floor is reached from the exterior ramp and through a separate access from the lower body. Two separate shapes, the dome and the stylobate, with their own access; two buildings on top of each other, each meeting a part of the program, each with a distinct functional and iconological condition.