Miasto i katedra w Évry. Smutna komedia omyłek (w trzech częściach)
The City and Cathedral of Évry. A Sad Comedy of Errors (in three parts)

Summary/Abstract: In the 1920s Le Corbusier propagated some rules that led to building up cities solely subordinated to the functional aims. The tradition of concentrating the building complex around the edifices important in cultural or spiritual life was ignored. Le Corbusier’s principles were present until the 1970s, despite the long-lasting critical estimation. According to these guidelines the town of Évry was established as one of many towns surrounding Paris, with the function of protecting the capital city of France against its extensive growth. The town without a centre changed under the influence of the inhabitants. Populated with immigrants it started to be marked with the buildings that enforced the cultural identity of the particular groups. The erection of a mosque and a synagogue gave the local urbanists the reason to think of building a large cathedral in the logical centre of the town. Initially the intention did not gain the local bishop’s approval, for the pastoral concepts of evangelisation were based on far less spectacular forms. Hence the ideological factors decided the erection of the cathedral, among them the tiredness of modernism and the will to come back to pre-modern tradition of shaping the city. The building of the great cathedral was supposed to remind the old French tradition of erecting cathedral edifices. In new reality however, when the town is inhabited by the people so varieted ethnically and religiously, the postmodern cathedral occured to be the work equally distant from the tradition as the modern surroundings.

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