Chapel of Our Lady of Consolation in Le Raincy

The engineering office of the Perret brothers designed reinforced concrete buildings as early as the beginning of the 20th century. Auguste Perret welcomed everyone in his Parisian studio with the phrase “Je fais du béton armé” (I make reinforced concrete). He rarely concealed the supporting concrete structure behind plaster or stone facades. He wanted everyone to find beauty in the exposed material. His architecture shaped space through construction. Perret did not hesitate to use this rediscovered raw material for significant public commissions such as theaters, concert halls, or shopping centers. In the case of the small town of Le Raincy, located twelve kilometers east of Paris, the reinforced concrete structure was even used to build a Catholic church dedicated to Our Lady of Consolation and to commemorate the victims of both battles on the Marne that took place during the First World War. The result is the first reinforced concrete church built in France, which bears all the qualities of Gothic cathedrals, where the mass is minimized and the structural solution is put on display. In contrast to Gothic architecture, however, Perret's construction is devoid of mysticism and focuses on the most rational solution possible.
Although the wet casting process of reinforced concrete requires frequent technological breaks, the church was completed in just fourteen months. Auguste Perret, who was also one of the donors, chose concrete due to limited financial resources. The entrance façade is dominated by a concrete tower with a belfry 50 meters high. The main nave "Sainte-Chapelle du béton armé" (Reinforced Concrete Holy Chapel) has a rectangular floor plan measuring 56 m x 20 m. The magnificent sacred space is lightly divided by always a quartet of ten-meter columns narrowing from 45 cm at the base to 35 cm at the top. The more complex circular formwork compensates for material savings. The columns, resembling tree trunks, help in the gradual diffusion of light without sharp shadows. The consecration and first service in the church took place on June 17, 1923. The organ by master John Abbey dates back to 1875 and was transported here from the old church in St-Louis, undergoing changes in 1957.
Perret opted for a simple decoration based on five types of prefabricated concrete blocks (cross, diamond, circle, square, and rectangle). These blocks not only formed the non-load-bearing outer skin of the stained glass windows (designed by master glassmaker Marguerite Huré) but were also used in the formwork of the vaulted ceilings, where they helped improve the acoustics in the main nave.
As early as the 1920s, sculptor Antoine Bourdelle designed the motif of Piety above the entrance tympanum. However, the installation of the bronze casting based on Bourdelle's painting in a 1:1 scale did not occur until 1999.
In 1966, the church was declared a historical monument, and the first restoration work immediately began. The aggressive urban environment has led to the gradual degradation of the concrete and the exposure of inadequately covered steel reinforcement, nearly a hundred years after the church's completion. The stained glass made of simple glazing inserted directly into the concrete blocks has been gradually leaking. The reconstruction of Perret's experimental structure is, of course, far more challenging and expensive than that of traditional masonry and plastered buildings.
For the Czech audience, an interesting parallel can be drawn with Bedřich Feuerstein, who worked in Perret's Paris office from 1924 to 1926, where he became intimately acquainted with the church project in Le Raincy and later shared the acquired experience with Antonín Raymond, in whose Tokyo studio Feuerstein stayed from 1926 to 1931. Raymond subsequently built a chapel in 1937 in the campus of the Women's Christian University in Tokyo, which is an almost identical copy (at half scale) of Perret's church in French Le Raincy.