Monastère des Bénédictines

English translation

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History

While the city development plan for Caen provided for the relocation of religious communities outside the urban area, the Benedictines chose for their new monastery a site in the middle of the countryside, at Couvrechef. They called upon a young Parisian architect, Jean Zunz, who drew up plans in 1954 for a monastery for a community of 200 nuns, when there were only 80 of them. The general plan conforms to Benedictine tradition: an east-oriented church with a longitudinal plan, with a choir screen separating the nuns' choir from the nave of the faithful, placed to the north of the cloister. On the storey of the west gallery of the cloister are situated the cells of the nuns which rise over four levels. The refectory takes place to the south. The eastern wing of the cloister is occupied by a courtyard which allows the quadrilateral to be closed. The chapter house, of square plan, is situated at the eastern limit of the church, from which it is separated by a corridor. The architectural treatment maintains the Cistercian tradition of formal austerity, tending to show the nudity of the structure of the walls and supports. The architect adopts a simple vocabulary for all the spaces of the monastery while a much more modern design is reserved for the church. The immense northern wall forming a roof space at a very steep pitch thus breaks the monotony of a longitudinal plan. The roof covering is composed of five modules of inverted pyramidal rib vaults in reinforced concrete, covered with granular render. The lighting of the nuns' choir is magnified by a glazed wall of 110 m² designed by the young artist Sergio Di Castro and executed by Ray.