L'ABBAYE DU THORONET

STEFAN ANTONI Principal Architect and Founder SAOTA www.saota.com

My favourite building of all time is the Ronchamp Chapel by Le Corbusier. I visited it before digital photography, so my photos are buried in a cemetery of Agfa slides.

Another church, which is a remarkable piece of architecture, space, and poetry, is L'abbaye du Thoronet in Provence. This is one of John Pawson's favourite buildings and features in his book Minimum. It is a Cistercian abbey completed in the early thirteenth century, which makes it over 800 years old, and yet, it is as poetical and timeless as if built today. The composition and the buildings themselves are quite modernist. It greatly influenced Le Corbusier's La Tourette monastery, inspiring several features, including the tower, the simple volumes, and the cloister galleries. The acoustics are remarkable, creating long echoes requiring the monks to sing slowly and perfectly together. Corb wrote at the time, '...the light and the shadow are the loudspeakers of this architecture of truth.’