Le Corbusier Ronchamp

Le Corbusier’s chapel Notre-Dame-du-Haut in Ronchamp is arguably the most famous modern religious building and a UNESCO world heritage site. It has been photographed by millions of people, including some of the most distinguished architectural photographers. Austrian artist Siegrun Appelt took an entirely new approach to look at the iconic structure, distinct from all her famous predecessors. Appelt focuses with utter concentration on details, creating compositions of highest sensitivity and precision. Her images highlight the place’s spatial structure and lines, Le Corbusier’s ingenious direction of light, as well as surfaces and passages. They can be read as hints to these details and at the same time invite a conclusion from detail to the whole. This publication includes a dialogue between Claudia Kromrei and Otto Kapfinger, in which they investigate the potential of photography to show Le Corbusier’s means of expression and discuss the visualisation and perception of material and immaterial elements of this icon of 20th-century architecture.