Couvent Sainte-Marie de la Tourette, Eveux-sur-l'Arbresle, France, Le Corbisier - 1953-1960

The buildings contain a hundred sleeping rooms for teachers and students, study halls, a hall for work and one for recreation, a library and a refectory. Next tomes the church where the monks carry on alone, on occasion, in the presence of several of the faithful. Finally the circulation connects all the parts, in particular those which appear in a new form. The achievement of the traditional cloister form is rendered impossible here by the slope of the terrain. On two levels, the loggias crowning the building, one for each acoustically-isolated monk's tell, form brise-soleil. The study halls, work and recreation halls, as well as the library occupy the upper level. Below are the refectory and the cloister in the form of a cross leading to the church. And then come the piles carrying the four convent buildings rising from the slope of the terrain loft in its original condition, without terracing.

The structural frame is of rough reinforced concrete. The panes of glass located on the three exterior faces achieve, for the first time, the system called: "the undulatory glass surface". On the other hand, in the garden-court of the cloister, the fenestration is composed of large concrete elements reaching from floor to ceiling, perforated with glazed voids and separated from one another by "ventilators" : vertical slits covered by metal mosquito netting and furnished with a pivoting shutter. The covered walks of the cloister are enclosed with "waves". The corridors leading to the dwelling tells are lighted by a horizontal opening located under the ceiling.

The convent is "posed" in the savage nature of the forest and grasslands which is independent of the architecture itself. The façades shall remain in rough concrete, the several infillings being painted with whitewash. The walls of the church shall be in "banchage". In the interior of the church, the "points of the diamond" shown in the section reproduced below will rot appear in the final execution because of different reasons, except one or two installed in a good place. The roof of the convent itself, like that of the church, will is covered with a thin layer of earth loft to the vicissitudes of the wind, birds and other carriers of seeds, assuring both water-tightness and isothermal protection.

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