©Valerie Bennett
María J. Orihuela Architecture Knowledge & Writing November 2013
La Tourette is that city for which Le Corbusier would never give us a plan of. The sheer absence of a general view of the building upon arrival provokes both fascination and inquietude in Colin Rowe, as his habitual architectural exercise –to find the parti– has been truncated or at least, postponed. He would later have a rather confusing memory of those first steps on the site, which are not too generously rewarded. The bare facade on the north side, enigmatically followed by an inglorious entrance into the main courtyard, cause quite an uncomfortable welcome, but are enough to make the fundamental statement evident: ‘No parti before la promenade.’ Somehow, it is as if the voice of the architect was to be perceived by Rowe with the bewilderment of a child who is told not to have dessert before the end of the lunch. Having been stopped from a direct dissection of the project, he is face to face with his own obsession and forced to assume in his own skin, with unprecedented intensity, that the pursuit of an idea presumes its contradiction. Not only the experience of Le Corbusier’s monastery would probably leave the question of parti unresolved; but there is an even more painful conflict brought to scene; that the piece on La Tourette, written six years later than his theory on Transparency, it is ten times a better account of the former theory than his text under that title, without ever mentioning the word. Transparency, parti, two ideas that are in a permanent battle in Colin Rowe’s mind, hunting each other and making evident that it has always been the restless the tension between two opposite strong ideas the kernel of his life and work. An image challenging another image. An eminent academic figure who, in front of his devoted public is simultaneously constructing the most enlightening discourse, and destroying himself as he drifts away from sobriety, far from the room and the audience and closer to a very intense and uncomfortable absence.