photo by Ed Alcock for The New York Times

A Church in France Is Almost a Triumph for Le Corbusier:

MORE than 40 years after he drowned off a remote beach in the south of France, Le Corbusier remains a transcendent force. Even if some blame him for the modern city’s greatest sins, from the steamrolling of historical neighborhoods to a stultifying emphasis on function, he is indisputably the most influential architect of the past century.
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Completed by that protégé, José Oubrerie, who has tinkered with many elements of the original sketches, the Church of St. Pierre has stirred debate among Parisian academics about the ethics of finishing a work left behind by a legendary architect.
But the core of Le Corbusier’s concept remains intact: a sanctuary that distills the history of architecture from the primitive cave through Modernism. At the same time its warped planes anticipate the fluid architectural forms of today, though with a restraint that shows how so much recent work has been diluted by cheap effects.

Very nice, check out the slideshow, and all photos on Flickr and more photos of St Pierre Church, Firminy by Le Corbusier