Church of St. Peter in Firminy

The Church of Saint Peter in Firminy is Le Corbusier's last building, which had to wait for its completion until the new millennium. The church project is part of the urban plan “Green Firminy”, initiated by the liberal mayor Eugène Claudius-Petit, who invited Le Corbusier to Firminy in 1950 to outline his vision of transforming the dirty mining town into a place full of greenery, sunshine, and fresh air. After Paris and Chandigarh, it is the location with the highest concentration of Le Corbusier's buildings. In addition to the church, Le Corbusier also built the Unité d'habitation apartment building (1964), a cultural center (1965), and a sports complex (1966).
The shape of the church was designed by Le Corbusier in the early 1960s together with his young assistant José Oubrerie, who took over the finishing work after the master's death. At the end of the 1970s, the torso of the square base was completed, and since then, another twenty years were spent waiting for the completion of the upper asymmetrical cone with its top edge slanted and equipped with several skylights. Deciphering the geometrically difficult form from Le Corbusier's sketches was just as challenging for experts at the Paris Le Corbusier center as the decision to complete the building forty years after the author's death. Ultimately, it is a miracle that a project which was condemned to remain on paper saw the light of day in 2006. Paradoxically, today’s perfect concrete processing techniques have taken away from the building the strength that we can feel in other late-period Le Corbusier brutalist buildings.

The church occupies a prominent position next to the athletic stadium. Le Corbusier had Protestant ancestors. He himself rejected the church as a dead institution. Nevertheless, towards the end of his life, he created two sacred buildings in southeastern France (the chapel in Ronchamp and the La Tourette monastery), which are among his most impressive works. The local spiritual community also did not wish for the completion of the church, refusing to financially participate in the construction in any way. They did not like the site 'sunk in the valley' nor the 'pagan shape' that resembled a cave. Construction of the church began six years after Le Corbusier's death. The financial costs associated with the realization were borne by the Le Corbusier Foundation, which, for this purpose, sold some artworks from its collection. During the construction, the contracting company went bankrupt, and for the next two decades, the unfinished church resembled a bombed bunker. At the beginning of the French recession in the 1980s, José Oubrerie went to America and permanently abandoned the idea that the church could ever be completed. Things did not start to move until 1995 when the unfinished ruin of the church was declared a historical monument. The city realized what a gem was hidden in the unfinished structure. Because French laws do not allow funding church buildings from municipal budgets, the space on the upper floor was designated as a multipurpose hall for various performances, and on the ground floor, which was originally intended to house a priest's apartment and a Sunday school, there is now an exhibition hall for modern art. The architectural and technical parameters were adjusted to meet contemporary standards, which may have eroded the original spirit. Nonetheless, the completed structure retains its monumental appearance and the sculptural play of basic geometric forms, which is most impressive when viewed from a distance.