| | | | | Version française
Ronchamp Tourisme - Vivez les Vosges du Sud

The Horsetail Cube

PRESENTATION

The Horsetail Cube In 1989, the village of Ronchamp began the renovation of its centre, in particular its two main squares: the first in front of the Post office and the Church, the second in the Market place.

The partnership between the Departmental office for infrastructure, the Chamber of commerce and industry in Lure, the State and the Region, the Department, the European FEDER funds, led to an urban architecture competition launched in 1990.

These two spaces had not undergone any notable changes since the thirties and were making a poor impression on the growing numbers of visitors, who found there was not much to link the famous work of Le Corbusier and the village below.

The winning idea was the one from the team of the Parisian sculptor Polska who suggested integrating into a real metamorphosis of the center of Ronchamp both historic axes of its past: coal and mining to which the village owes a large part of its existence and Le Corbusier’s Chapel Notre-Dame du Haut which has led to Ronchamp being famous world-wide.

The group of artists had the idea to stack on the ground alignments of diverse materials suggesting the deep geological strata and sculptures and urban objects with lines and colours in the spirit of "Ronchamp from above ". In the centre of a complex associating progresses, squares, car parks and living spaces, the Horsetails Cube crystallizes the whole idea.
The purity of its black granite plates protecting a group of bronze horsetails symbolizes the whole history of Ronchamp. Horsetails, plants from a distant carboniferous era at the origin of the formation of coal, are here the deep roots of the village, linked to its present and its new youth, expressed by the creation of original urban architecture.

Situated in the marketplace, this monument is part of the mining trails which are proposed to the visitors to Ronchamp.

Communauté de communes Rahin et Chérimont
Offices de Tourisme de France
Offices de Tourisme de France
Massif des Vosges
Parc naturel régional des Ballons des Vosges
Ronchamp Tourisme
25 rue Le Corbusier
70250 RONCHAMP