02

September 2019

La Sainte-Baume (the “Trouinade”)

Le Corbusier

KÄRÄJÄKIVET edited by Márcia Nascimento . Nuno Costa

La Sainte-Baume (the “Trouinade”)
The Basilica, the hotels and the Permanent City. 1948

Le Corbusier
Le Corbusier La Sainte-Baume (the “Trouinade”) Käräjäkivet • 02 4 • 5

Synopsis

Publication name: Essay number: “Käräjäkivet” is a periodical publication of thought and criticism that
Käräjäkivet 02 was born from a wider project developed around a proposal which
Directors, Coordinators Author: was never accomplished, concerning the Saivaara Monument,
and Editors: Le Corbusier elaborated in 1978 by the legendary Finnish artist Tapio Wirkkala.
Márcia Nascimento Title: Website:
Nuno Costa La Sainte-Baume (the www.karajakivet.com “In 1975, the President Urho Kekkonen expressed as his wish that
Edition: “Trouinade”) 1948 E-mail: his monument should be placed in northwestern Lapland, on the
Márcia Nascimento · Nuno Original title: info@karajakivet.com Saivaara mountain. [...]
Costa. Architects La Sainte-Baume (la Facebook: How to make a monument on a site that is naturally so beautiful
Language: “Trouinade”) 1948 @karajakivet that one cannot take away anything from it, neither is man able
English Date: Instagram: to add anything to it? Tapio Wirkkala ended up with a proposal in
ISSN: September 2019 @karajakivet which all the materials of the monument have been picked from
2184-5735 Support: Address: the mountain itself.
Language advisory and Jenny and Antti Wihuri Rua Barjona de Freitas nº5, The monument consists of a straight, paved, almost imperceptible
translations: Foundation 1º Esq, 4750-265 Barcelos, path crossing over the Saivaara mountain. Five stones will be
Ana Catarina Mesquita Portugal raised from the mountainside to the summit of the mountain, […].
Graphic design concept: Phone numbers: These stones will form a circle, similar to the court venue stones of
Miguel Peixoto - Design. (00351) 967 366 089 the old days [called in Finnish as “Käräjäkivet”], on which the wise
Márcia Nascimento · Nuno (00351) 963 953 266 men of the village got together in order to decide about common
Costa. Architects matters. The one who has the strength to climb up the stony path
Cover photograph: may sit on these stones, look at the landscape and think.
Postcard “La Sainte-Baume- This artless monument is not going to change or destroy the
-Sainte-Marie Magdaleine à landscape.”
la Grotte (rep. tabl.) Edit IPA” Tapio Wirkkala Rut Bryk Foundation Archive, 1978
© Archives départementales

du Var In this sense, this publication intends to accomplish, not in

Back cover photograph: Márcia Nascimento (b. 1982), Nuno Costa (b. 1984). form but in content, the idea of Tapio Wirkkala for the Saivaara
Käräjäkivet site in Eura. They have a Degree in Architecture from the Monument: the creation of a place where men of all races and
© Rauno Hilander. Courtesy University of Minho (DAA-UM, 2007) and a Master colors can gather together to think.
of the photographer. Degree from the University of Santiago de
Compostela (USC, 2009). For that purpose, an online platform was created where different
Since then, they run their activity as architects invited authors gather together through texts, illustrated and
developing their own works from which should be edited in small booklets, expressing their thoughts on architecture,
underlined the project Tapio Wirkkala’s Saivaara art and culture in general, with the Saivaara Monument as the
Monument, awarded with grants, among others, main driver.
from the Arts Council of Finland (TAIKE, 2014) and the
Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation (FCG, 2017). Based in Portugal, it is published, as a general rule, every quarter,
They are co-founders of Käräjäkivet (2019, onwards). by adding a new text that can be viewed or downloaded online.
Le Corbusier La Sainte-Baume (the “Trouinade”) Käräjäkivet • 02 6 • 7

Editor’s Note

Márcia Nascimento During the next issues of Käräjäkivet, we will sporadically retrieve
& Nuno Costa some texts which, although already published on other platforms,
may allow a better understanding of the Saivaara Monument by
putting it into perspective with other works and projects from
completely different contexts but very similar circumstances.

In this sense, we republish in this second issue Le Corbusier’s

unrealized project for La Sainte-Baume mountain chain in the Var
region of southern France. Together with Edward Trouin, owner
of part of these lands and also his client, Le Corbusier, around
1948, dreamed of building in La Sainte-Baume an architectural
ensemble, consisting of a Basilica and a City (Basilica of Peace and
Forgiveness, and City of Contemplation) to accommodate those
who wished to visit this mystical place, once inhabited by Mary
Magdalene, as the legend says.

As we mentioned, we are interested in publishing this project

to explore those aspects that coincide with the ones of the
Saivaara Monument. From the outset, its circumstance of absent
architecture, which still survives in the universe of ideas and
dreams, probably the most appropriate place for its existence. It
also makes us reflect on the paradox of acting architecturally in
wild territory, with the main purpose of protecting it. Finally, rather
than responding to the utilitarian needs inherent to the program,
Le Corbusier gives the project an eminently spiritual character due
to the power of place.

This second issue of Käräjäkivet would not have been possible

without the indispensable collaboration of the Le Corbusier
Foundation by unreservedly agreeing to cede the rights to
reproduce part of the endless original material produced by Le
Corbusier for this project.

La Sainte-Baume, the forest and the cave. 1950

© Jean Combier. CIM-Combier Impremieur Mâcon. Atchives départementales du Var.
Le Corbusier La Sainte-Baume (the “Trouinade”) Käräjäkivet • 02 8 • 9

La Sainte-Baume (the “Trouinade”)

- The Basilica, the hotels and the Permanent City

Le Corbusier, An astonishing and perhaps marvelous undertaking: inspired by

Architect Edward Trouin whose family have been geometers in Marseilles
since 1780. He, the last of them, is fifty years old, and is descended
from seamen and pirates of St-Malo, and from peasants of
Provence. He is a geometer, that is to say that he is devoted to
architecture, construction, the management of the land, the
countryside and to geometry. He speaks with a Marseilles accent,
has the energy of the “thunder of God”, as they say in Marseilles,
and possesses by chance a million square meters of uncultivated
and unproductive land at La Sainte-Baume. He decided to make
some use of it. Weekend hunters came and asked him to sell them
pieces here and there, but Trouin did not wish to sell, he wanted
to realize a noble idea, to save the countryside of La Sainte-Baume
from the speculative builder, who had already invaded Le Plan
d’Aups. Then began the long search for an architecture worthy of
the countryside.

La Sainte-Baume, “a High Place”, a formidable wall of rocks on the

edge of half a plate (Le Plan d’Aups), the other half, slightly raised,
looking to the north as far as the mountain Sainte-Victoire, already
made memorable by Cézanne. Halfway up this massive vertical
rock face is the black hole of a cave: here lived Mary Magdalen, the
friend of Jesus, who came from Palestine in a small boat, with the
other Marys. Every morning angels came to the cave and carried
her 200 meters up to the summit of the mountain called “Le Pilon”,
where she used to pray. From there the mountain falls away as far
as Toulon and the Mediterranean.

The legend has made La Sainte-Baume a divine place, which today

is guarded by the Dominicans. On the plain at the foot of the hills
is La Basilica de St-Maximin, where the extremely beautiful head
(skeleton) of Mary Magdalen is kept in a golden casket.

Maps of the region with levels and contours, 1.20000; 1.1000

© FLC/ADAGP
Le Corbusier La Sainte-Baume (the “Trouinade”) Käräjäkivet • 02 10 • 11

Our investigation can only be approached with respect. The

cardinals and archbishops of France condemned it. They did it
with great sincerity, convinced that they were doing good. They,
pastors of souls, are not aware of the humility and grandeur of
the task at hand. They wanted to safeguard the dignity of one of
the most beautiful human legends, that of Mary Magdalene, the
Lord’s friend: she washed His feet with a perfume bottle and rinsed
them with her hair; the angels lifted her in the morning to the
top of the mountain. There is nothing complicated here, nothing
ostentatious or misguided. There is nothing overly representative,
pompous or ceremonious here.

In about 1946, Trouin went up to Paris, and there he saw everybody

including the academicians. He engaged each to make a special
project for the Val d’Aups at the foot of the rocks which would
establish in this lordly landscape a place of architecture, a place
of meditation, a meeting place which would make possible the
appreciation of the full value of the spirit which reigns there. He
got his project, but when, after some years, the first enthusiasm
for his ideas had died down, he found himself left alone with only
one architect remaining faithful to him - Le Corbusier. And the
extravagant, unbelievable project has indeed become a testament
to human emotion, aimed at reaching a class of beings, a type of
rare and perhaps unclassified spirits. After all the avatars, there is
empty ground and the plans described here. It should be said that
after the announcement of the construction of the future Basilica
of Peace and Forgiveness, there was a great stir around the world
to the point of publicly denouncing the only survivors Trouin and
Le Corbusier, accused of sacrilege for wanting to earn money from
the most beautiful things, to the extent that one day Le Corbusier
said to Trouin: “Prove them otherwise: stand before the rock, naked
as a hermit, put your hat in front of you; wait for alms to fall, and
from time to time, with a pneumatic drill, dig the rock!”

Postcard. La Sainte-Baume, Saint-Pilon and the cave. 1910

© Archives départementales du Var.
Le Corbusier La Sainte-Baume (the “Trouinade”) Käräjäkivet • 02 12 • 13

The underground Basilica

(...) crosses La Sainte-
Baume massif from north
to south as an initial and
redeeming journey. Seven
narrow corridors lead
visitors to the first room,
where a set of ramps
leads to the procession
path called the “path of
perfection”, accessible
directly through a larger
door to the “Door of
Grace”. Above, a vertical
pipe connects the “Door
of Grace” to the cave
platform (...). Surrounded
by crypts, the processional
route branches into three
(the Trinity) to access the
“Holy of Holies”, (...) an
ancient arena-shaped
room (…). In a second
state, the “Holy of Holies”
becomes a gigantic room,
(...) crossed by a helical
ramp punctuated by
seven altars (the seven
Cross section: underground church, the central altar and the deadly sins). The exits lead
cave. Paper drawing 22 x73 cm. to the southern slope of
La Sainte-Baume, facing
© FLC/ADAGP the Mediterranean (...). 1
Le Corbusier La Sainte-Baume (the “Trouinade”) Käräjäkivet • 02 14 • 15

The Basilica was a remarkable architectural enterprise, invisible,

enormous effort expended on the interior destined to move only
those souls capable of understanding. The building was entirely
within the rock; partly artificially and partly naturally lit, it ran from
one side of the rock at the entrance of the cave of Mary Magdalen,
to the other, opening suddenly on the blinding light and the
distant sea.

During these years-long work, Trouin developed an unusual

architectural sense, a spirit truly touched by great ideas, and he
was strong and true enough to be despised by the ordinary. The
plans show first the conception of the Basilica with its inclined
ways, and vertical and horizontal rooms which receive the light of
day through wells, or from the ends of the galleries. In addition,
the electric light would create a symphony of shadows, gloom, and
light, which could have been extraordinary.

The corollary of the enterprise was the search for a modern form of
hotel, of hospitality, for a clientele desirous of solitude and thought,
or simply for people who might come to stay a weekend or more
permanently.

The scheme for La Sainte-Baume comprises the Basilica, cut in the

rock, the two ring-shaped hotels, and the Permanent City on the
other side of the plateau. Near the Permanent City there lies by
chance an old ruined sheepfold which might serve as a museum
of Mary Magdalen, where Trouin’s talent would be able to manifest
itself as much in the exceptional iconographical collection as in the
manner of displaying it, intense and moving.

The lands of Trouin. Overall plan, colored drawing. 1.5000.

© FLC/ADAGP
Le Corbusier La Sainte-Baume (the “Trouinade”) Käräjäkivet • 02 16 • 17

Because of adverse opinions about the enterprise and the changes

it would make in the landscape, Trouin made the drafts for two
books, astonishing works which still exist and are: one, a history
of architecture, set out according to a new method, the other an
iconography of Mary Magdalen.

For some years Trouin lived in Paris in a garret the walls of which
he covered with plans, drawings and paintings. When the walls
were covered, he began to fill the ceiling as well. It is a pity that this
extraordinary room was never photographed.

After several years the affair was at a standstill. One might have
thought that our modern world was unsuited for such an enterprise,
the object of which was to touch the very foundations of the human
soul: sin and pardon, weakness and grandeur, magnanimity and
courage, simplicity and humility. There was nothing of the banal
in it; all was in deference to the landscape, modulated by and even
expressive of the landscape: landscape seen from buildings, or
landscape made of buildings in a passionately desired harmony.
The means employed were those at the disposal of people
who desire to do something, but have only the resources of the
unfortunate. The Permanent City of residence would have been
designed within the humblest existing techniques, the rammed
earth (pisé), inside a plank formwork and providing an essential
architecture of precision and magnitude, all on a human scale.

With such an architecture the noblest and greatest town plans can
be achieved, deprived of emphasis but with inherent grandeur.
Life in these pisé buildings can have great dignity and regain for
man in the machine age a sense of the fundamental human and
natural resources.

But circumstances allowed the use of another material; the firm

of “French Aluminum” listened to our proposals, and the result
was that an aluminum architecture was conceived, to be built
alongside the pisé, in that most exact and the most modern of
Perspectives. Hotels study drawings. 1951 metals.
© FLC/ADAGP
Le Corbusier La Sainte-Baume (the “Trouinade”) Käräjäkivet • 02 18 • 19

South-east view, profile buildings and land.

(Permanent City), 1.500.
© FLC/ADAGP
Le Corbusier La Sainte-Baume (the “Trouinade”) Käräjäkivet • 02 20 • 21

The illustrations here show only a miserable portion of all that was
made, thought and designed for La Sainte-Baume. At present
silence reigns after the hatred and scorn have raged. But Trouin
like Le Corbusier can raise his head, satisfied to have attempted, in
this age when no one works except for financial or utilitarian ends,
an enterprise destined to touch the bottom of the human heart. 2

1
Extracted from Le
Corbusier en France.
Réalisations et projets.,
Gilles Ragot et Mathilde
Dion, Electa / Moniteur,
Paris, 1987, p.161-162.

2
Extracted from Le
Corbusier, Oeuvre
complète, volume 5,
1946-1952. © 1953 Verlag
für Architektur (Artemis),
Detail. Chapelle Notre Dame du Haut. Ronchamp, France. 1955 Zürich. Twelfth edition
1995.
© ADAGP. Photo: Paul Kozlowski
Le Corbusier La Sainte-Baume (the “Trouinade”)

Bio Author

1887 Le Corbusier (Charles-Edouard Jeanneret) born

6 October at La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland.
1919 Launches L’Esprit Nouveau magazine with
Amédée Ozenfant and Paul Dermée.
1923 Builds the little house “Le Lac” at Corseaux on
Lake Geneva for his parents.
1925 Builds Pavillon de l’Esprit Nouveau (Paris) and the
Pessac housing estate near Bordeaux.
1928 Founder member of CIAM (Congrés
Internationaux d’architecture moderne) at the
castle of La Sarraz, in Switzerland.
1929 Works on the Villa Savoye (Poissy), the
Mundaneum and urbanism in South America.
1930 Works on urban designs for Algiers and studies
for “Ville Radieuse”.
1938 Paints eight wall murals in Roquebrune-Cap-
Martin in Eileen Gray’s house.
1943 Publishes the Charte d’Athènes (Athens Charter).
1944 Works on the Unités d’Habitation, Marseilles.
1948 Works on La Sainte-Baume Project.
1950 Starts working on the Chapel at Ronchamp.
Publishes Modulor I, Poèsie sur Alger (Poem on
Algiers) and L’Unité d’Habitation de Marseille.
1951 First trip to India: visits Chandigarh and
Ahmedabad.
Cabanon, Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, France.
1953 Builds Dominican Monastery at Sainte Marie de
la Tourette (Eveux) and de la Maison du Brésil at
Cité Universitaire (Paris) with Lucio Costa.
1957 Builds Unité d’habitation (Berlin), Maison du
Brésil at Cité Universitaire (Paris) with Lucio
Costa, Dominican Monastery Sainte Marie de
La Tourette (Eveux), Unité d’habitation (Briey en
Forêt) and Museum of Western Art (Tokyo).
1965 On 27 August Le Corbusier dies while swimming
at Cap-Martin, France.
 KÄRÄJÄKIVET

Finnish word meaning “court stones” or “circle of

stones”: places of judgment (originally iron age
graves), where judgments were held and justice
carried out, accordingly to the Finnish National
Board of Antiquities.

In the ancient times, they were important places

where the primitive leaders of the North got
together in order to discuss and decide about
common matters.

www.karajakivet.com

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ISSN: 2184-5735
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