Schools began with a man under a tree, who did not know he was teacher, discussing his realization with a few, who did not know they were students.  The students aspired that their sons also listen to such a man.  Spaces were erected and the first schools became.  It can also be said that the existence-will of school was there even before the circumstances of the man under the tree.

- Louis I. Kahn (Lobell 1979, 47).

The communal spirit of learning that I envision as fundamental to Urban Shadow is a cult synergy that is perhaps best expressed by providing an example that documents this premise in the third and realized dimension.  To do the honours, I offer La Tourette.  It is perhaps no accident that the monastery shares a distinct overlap with the art institute.  It is one of the reasons that I believe the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris, partly the revitalization of an existing monastery, is so successful, particularly in its composition of pavilion-like buildings with the residual space utilized in the most sensitive and contemplative manners.  The introspective and interactive mandate of the institute is greatly appreciated in a similar fashion to the monastery. 

La Tourette is the home of the Dominican monks in Eveux-sur-l’Arbresle, France and defies the visitor’s historically trained eye that interprets it as anything but a monastery.  However, Le Corbusier’s design generated no new rules, it only simplified those dating to the 13th Century down to the essentials and amplified them subversively in a truly expressive sanctuary.  This expression fully adopted the premise that architecture begins with humankind and “his relationships with his fellow men, the suprapersonal, corporate forms which he creates in conjunction with them and their position in relation to God” (Henze 1966, 9).  The grounds for the architectonic plan are found in the life and combined ideas of the men whom the building was intended to serve, and architecture that strengthens and confirms the inhabitants and their basic communal institutions in self-discovery.  The conception of La Tourette as a node where many formal and intellectual paths converge is an extremely critical interpretation of the institution and fundamental to the premise of Urban Shadow. 
 

La Tourette is described by Alberto Perez-Gomez (1997) as an edifice where time is no longer linear; where our participation with the building adds up into layers that both reveal and conceal, never resulting in a final clarification of the “idea” of the building.  The element of “mystery” is one that reappears in many institutional precedents researched for this thesis; the irreconcilable reconciled.  La Tourette presents “architecture as a verb (ritual making)” (Perez-Gomez 1997, 368) and, as such, constitutes the experiential interaction between the building and the inhabitants that it services.   Kahn’s doctrine is further corroborated by Perez-Gomez (1997) who states that “architectural meaning appears in our intersubjective space as in the space of a metaphor, as a recognition of that which cannot be reduced to words and yet begs to be named.”  A description that parallels the Nature of Art revealed in the description of Lionardo’s “La Gioconda.”  It is this fundamental function of the institution that I wish to extract and implement within the context of Art as a mechanism to generate the mystery that endows inspiration; La Tourette substantiating confirming any doubts that architecture indeed can satisfy such ambition.