"Probably the best-known of all modern churches, Perret's Notre Dame du Raincy is a remarkable essay in reinforced concrete; the new material has literally replaced traditional masonry and brought with it the 'intimation of ineffable space' which the great Gothic builders referred to. Tall, slim columns rising to a height of 35 feet are no thicker than 14 inches around their girths; large windows (also in concrete) encompass the space of the church itself like filigree grills. Rationalism in the design of this building has replaced 'mysticism', and the whiff of Gothicism is subordinated to Perret's mastery of his material and its structural potential."

— Dennis Sharp. Twentieth Century Architecture: a Visual History. p68.

"...The result was undoubtedly the most revolutionary building constructed in the first quarter of the present century...The design comprised four rows of free-standing columns 37 ft. high, spaced 33 ft. apart along the length of the nave, and diminished from 17 in. at the foot to 14 in. at the summit. Being free-standing, and thus unaffected by the normal need to receive the abutment of intermediate beams of partitions, there was no practical obligation to make the columns rectangular in section, and therefore, despite the increased cost of the form-work, Perret made them round....[I]t was most economical...in that it provided constant rigidity from every angle, like a tree trunk, and was, as he himself pointed out 'best adapted for a member subjected to compression;...it was more satisfactory optically as a result of the gradations of shadow and constancy of silhouette."

— from Peter Collins. Concrete: The Vision of a New Architecture, A Study of Auguste Perret and his Precursors by Peter Collins. p163, 202, 203,204, 212.

The Creator's Words

"The Renaissance was in my opinion a retrospective movement; it was not 'rebirth' but decadence, and one may say that even though, after the end of the middle ages, certain men of genius produced monuments that were masterpieces, such as the Val-de-Grace, the Dome des Invalides and the Palace of Versailles, these edifices are merely magnificent stage decorations; their structure does not dictate their appearance as at Hagia Sophia or Chartres. Versailles is badly constructed, and when Time will have exerted its mastery over this palace, we shall not be left with a ruin, but with a mass of unidentifiable rubble. This is not Architecture; Architecture is what makes beautiful ruins."

— Auguste Perret. from Peter Collins. Concrete: The Vision of a New Architecture, A Study of Auguste Perret and his Precursors. p163.