“Cleaning Corbusier” in France

La Tourette was warm in the golden rays of the setting sun when we arrived. Perched on a hill, the levitating fortress overlooked its forested valley below. Standing before one of the most referenced modernist buildings in Western academia felt oddly familiar - studied in plan, admired in photographs, and encountered weekly as a scale model by the 7th-floor laser cutter room. Yet estrangement grew out of the false familiarity as we began inhabiting the “machine for living”. The heightened curiosity, the whisper rule, the heavy bell ring - all infused the mundane with a new meaning. Corbusier’s béton brut became elemental; meals turned into observations of framed landscapes; the cell was no longer a room but a space that subtly reshaped my daily rhythm. Here, the intentional austere proved anything but sterile: the meadow was fragrant with peppermint, windows layered with spiderwebs tracing their own geometry across Xenakis’ facade, and at night, the Milky Way emerged. During evening mass, wind entering the chapel deepened the chants into a low, resonant hum. The large glazed openings bathed the hallways in light, yet also made the building achingly cold - reminding us that even the most canonical works are alive, imperfect, and in need of care. In the end, our visit to La Tourette brought focus to the importance of experiencing the spaces we have idealized for so long, in order to form our own understanding of them.