The La Tourette Cloister, a monastery designed by the Architect Le Corbusier is not just a building, but it is an emotional journey that is undertaken by walking through this spiritual environment created simply by using space and “architectural forms” to evoke serenity and calm. This building "Santé Marie de La Tourette" is a priory of the Dominican order located on the hill of Lyon, France, and is one of the last buildings designed by the 66-year-old architect Le Corbusier, the design began in May 1953 and ended in 1961 and was recently inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay The reason why I decided to select this particular building is because it "speaks" to me personally, I like to think that every building has a soul and this soul must be cultivated by the type of design that the Architect does and from how the Architect translates the landscape and space into something pure like "Poetry", here in the case of La Tourette, Le Corbusier does exactly the same thing, personifies the landscape and "poeticizes" the architecture, uses the ideology of “form follows function”, since the function of the building is to house “wisdom” (school), “spirituality” (monastery), “serenity” (library). This building therefore connects to the human body in several cases, in my opinion on this building and Le Corbusier's ideologies physically, the building is raised on stilts, columns and pillars, just as a human body is “freed from the ground” through the use of legs, the floor plans open up just as the torso of a human body widens from the waist to the chest, the free roof with terrace to act as solar gains shows the human head and the ideology of wisdom absorption. the interior of the building is designed to house Le Corbusier's Modular Man which suggests how the interior is organized according to the human form, the interior of the monastery has three fascinating connections with the human, the first character is the point from a minimalist point of view for the interpretation of serenity, spirituality and isolation for a form of concentration towards the work to be done, this psychological way of representing architecture is poetic. Another character of the interior of this place is the culmination of “light and space”, the intellectual way of producing light in a way requires a lot of observation the way light evokes emotions, this idea of ​​“holy light” or “ spiritual light” is really well focused, the light has been controlled in such a way that it touches the human spirit and connects it directly to the Architecture, and also to the function of the space. Another character of the use of the materiality of the interior compared to the exterior of the building makes us think, the type of facade of which the human body is composed of and how the interior is in a certain sense more complex, in the same way where this building was carefully created, the materiality on the outside is concrete and glass while Le Corbusier states that concrete is his favorite material to build with, this exterior facade is rougher and climate resistant like human skin, while the interior of the building is more inclined towards a softer skin to create a welcoming emotion, but at the same time some parts of the wall have a rougher skin to emphasize the minimalism of the building skin. The project I am working on in this moment is about Landscape, and I'm taking a point of view on how architecture and humans give meaning to landscape, this idea that landscape has a soul that we cultivate over time through architecture, agriculture , housing. , this is how we design the landscape and the architecture that standson it to complement each other on an emotional level, we as humans do not make the landscape until there is a man-made form on it that gives it life, this piece that gives shape to the landscape is Architecture, Le Corbusier has the same ideology with the landscape when he suggests placing the monastery at the top of the hill, for the reason that it can be seen from very far away, meaning that he wants the building to fit into the landscape, the contour around it, and suggesting that the landscape in turn complete the architecture. La Tourette was positioned on the top of the hill in a somewhat fashionable way almost to suggest the way a human body is dressed and seen, the building was designed "from top to bottom" thus creating a irregularity with the relief, says Le Corbusier "let it sit as it will", this ideology of making the building blend into the horizon and speak to the landscape is in itself fictitious. The building uses concrete as a material and therefore personifies the idea of ​​something being solid and "concrete", almost like a rock sitting in the landscape. This idea of ​​placing the building where it is and programming it comes from one of Le Corbusier's visits to Galluzzo, a "Tuscan town" in Florence, Italy, which was located on the top of a hill and was a community with a town hall, a church, a school with the streets acting as corridors to give way, and each of the buildings had a view towards the landscape determining this idea of ​​how architecture is nothing without the context of the landscape, and furthermore the program of La Tourette is based on this same ideology of creating a city in one building by creating a school space, a space for the town hall and a space for the monastery by creating corridors in the building as connections to these main spaces, the architect also creates a ridge in the building that separates the main building from the monastery to suggest the division between functionality in space, just as in the city of Florence the architect uses glass windows divided by mullions to give all rooms a view of the landscape, divides the windows in this rhythmic shape to create a view of the landscape through this mathematical equation of creating space and views. The main point I would like to highlight about the beauty of this building is about its terraced area, when it comes to serenity and tranquility the terrace really evokes this emotion in the human soul as the terrace is covered with earth and is cultivated with grasslands as planters and ti it feels like "walking between earth and sky" to meditate and connect the physical with the spiritual. A rather interesting feature of the building is this way of entry of light and its manipulation to force you to "fake" an emotion, the skylights looking more "enigmatic" and "violent" with their shapes similar to cannons and d 'assault in the courtyard with the steep sloping roof of the forum in comparison to the serenity and calm of the other spaces of the building, but the skylight that is concentrated under these luminaires evokes spirituality and "holy light", the building also uses bright colors the entry way of light to create colored light shapes on the walls of the innermost part of the monastery. This building, in my opinion, is perfectly located and has just the right amount of work put into it to create a “to be” experience, but if I had to disagree about the design and architecture, it would be the way Le Corbusier uses these rather "playful" objects like pyramids or cubes or cones in the spaces to create light patterns on the building, I don't agree with this part as it goes out of context in the sense that the building should make the person feel closer to God, I think it's a decision made based on pure design ability, but a”,.