La Tourette 1 By Åke Eson Lindman

La Tourette 2 By Åke Eson Lindman

La Tourette

By Åke E:son Lindman

The Monastery of La Tourette (1960) is a building complex in glass and concrete, situated on a hillside near the city of Lyon in the south east of France. This is one of Swiss–French architect Le Corbusier’s (1887–1965) later work, and representative of the sculptural and brutalist sides of his long and influential practice in modern architecture. It was built to house 100 monks who could live, study and worship here in peace. Today a small community of monks still resides in the building which is listed as a historic monument, and guided tours are offered to the public. One of the main characteristics of the architecture is how the intake of natural light has been constructed. At places, sky lights have been designed to hide direct viewing of its light source when seen from the inside, and constitute fascinating geometrical shapes that shoots out from the building on the outside. Like in the crypt, where three large spherical “canons à lumière” (light guns) are inclined at varied angles, and in the sacristy, where seven diamond shaped holes are cut out in the ceiling.

Åke E:son Lindman (Swedish b 1953) graduated in photography from Konstfack, University of Arts, Crafts and Design in 1975, and has since the 1980s dedicated himself to document our built environment – from the Step Pyramid of Djoser, Saqqara in Egypt, via Nagakin Capsule Tower, Tokyo in Japan, to Caixa Forum, Madrid in Spain. As the leading photographer in Europe on architecture, Lindman’s work has been frequently exhibited and featured in international architectural and design periodicals. Lindman has been the main photographer of over 50 books for publishers such as Birkhäuser, Thames & Hudson and Bonnier and a monograph on Lindman’s work, Pure Architecture, was published by Arena in 2010.