That house with the diagonal bookcases is amazing.
I went to the convent of La Tourette this summer. It is a very special building, very hard, but amazingly playful at the same time. Modernist but with the character and atmosphere of castles, Scottish fisherman's huts, Greek towns. I stayed two nights, and was going to visit Lyon in between but instead I just stayed and walked around the building. You stay in a cell and eat with the monks in the refectory. You're encouraged to attend the masses even if, like me, you're not a Catholic or don't believe in God.
It's an intense experience. One thing that was completely unexpected: I visited near the summer solstice. When I went into the church in the evening, the setting sun coming in through a slot window just under the ceiling grazed across its concrete slabs, and at the same time a shaft of light from the side cut across the polished metal cross at one end of the altar, making it shine, and then hit the back wall right in the centre. From where I was at the other end of the church it seemed there was a halo resting on the altar.
That house with the diagonal bookcases is amazing.
I went to the convent of La Tourette this summer. It is a very special building, very hard, but amazingly playful at the same time. Modernist but with the character and atmosphere of castles, Scottish fisherman's huts, Greek towns. I stayed two nights, and was going to visit Lyon in between but instead I just stayed and walked around the building. You stay in a cell and eat with the monks in the refectory. You're encouraged to attend the masses even if, like me, you're not a Catholic or don't believe in God.
It's an intense experience. One thing that was completely unexpected: I visited near the summer solstice. When I went into the church in the evening, the setting sun coming in through a slot window just under the ceiling grazed across its concrete slabs, and at the same time a shaft of light from the side cut across the polished metal cross at one end of the altar, making it shine, and then hit the back wall right in the centre. From where I was at the other end of the church it seemed there was a halo resting on the altar.