'Le Corbusier by Himself'
John Hill, Jenny Keller
14. April 2016
View from southeast (Image: © Xavier Delory)
Oops, he did it again: For the second time, "conceptual photographer" Xavier Delory has virtually changed the architecture of a Le Corbusier building, covering the surfaces of the Chapel in Ronchamp with murals from Villa E-1027 on the Côte d’Azur.
His latest work, writes Xavier Delory: "The chapel’s architecture surprised a great number of architects and architectural critics who saw Le Corbusier as one of the fathers of functionalism who swore allegiance only to the right angle. Its round shapes inspired by the Vosges hills (audio visual) and the animal world (crab shell for the roof), appeared to them to be a betrayal of the theories of modern architecture."
Now Xavier Delory has surprised people who are accustomed to the whitewashed walls of Le Corbusier's iconic chapel by, once again, skillfully applying color to the facade; in this case the murals Le Corbusier painted (some say "vandalized") at Eileen Gray's Villa E-1027, which was restored and opened to the public last year. Although only digital and virtual, to be sure, Delory has created a new work of art that is as polarizing as the chapel once was.