Project
Author


Pascal Häusermann, Patrick Le Merdy


Pierre Székely


Jean-Benjamin Maneval


Campus Lahnberge

Kurt Schneider, Helmut Spieke, Günter Niedner


Casa Sperimentale

Guiseppe Perugini, Uga De Plaisan, Raynaldo Perugini


Vittorio Giorgini



Church of the Holy Trinity

Fritz Gerhard May, Fritz Wotruba


François Stahly


Pierre Székely


Les Coquilles

André Dubard De Gaillarbois


Divine Word Seminary Chapel

Antonin Raymond


Dragon Fort

Yōji Watanabe


Église Saint-André

Marius Depont


Esprit

Pierre Székely


François Stahly




Pierre Székely


Grand Double

Alicia Penalba


Gunma Music Center

Antonin Raymond


Hôtel de Ville de Bobigny

Marius Depont


Hiroshima Peace Center & Memorial Park

Kenzo Tange


Impressions de Voyage

Pierre Székely


Lycée Agricole François Pétrarque

Roland Bechmann, François Girard, Charles André, Pierre Biscop


Jacques Couëlle


Jean-Louis Chanéac


Jacques Couëlle


Pascal Häusermann, Claude, Costy


Jacques Gillet, Félix Roulin, René Greisch


Pierre Székely, Henri Mouette



Mourning Hall

Ferdinand Keilmann


Municipal Gymnasium

Junzo Sakakura


Nichinan Culture House

Kenzo Tange


Kenji Imai


Paul Gerhardt Kirche

Fehling + Gogel


La Pierre du Méditorium

Pierre Székely


Pierre Székely


Le Regard

Pierre Székely


François Stahly


Vladimir Kalouguine


Pascal Häusermann, Claude Costy


St. Pius X

Joachim Schürmann


Saint Mary Cathedral

Kenzo Tange


Saga Prefectural Museum

Dai-ichi Kobo, Yoshichika Uchida



Sky Building

Yōji Watanabe


Sky House

Kiyonori Kikutake


Signe Humain I

Pierre Székely


Signe Métaphysique

Pierre Székely


Sint-Ritakerk

Léon Stynen, Paul de Meyer


Snarøya Church

Odd Østbye, Harald Hille


La Soucoupe

Roger Vissuzaine, René Rivière


Prefectural Gymnasium

Junzo Sakakura


Rotaprint Administration Building

Klaus Kirsten


Kiyonori Kikutake


Tower House

Takamitsu Azuma


Trilogía

Alicia Penalba


Victor Vasarely


Pascal Häusermann


Untitled

François Stahly


Unknown



Biographies


Takamitsu Azuma (1933—2015) graduated in 1957 from the School of Architecture at the University of Osaka, Japan. For seven years, he worked alongside Sakakura Junzo, one of Japan’s most acclaimed architects. In 1966, exactly a year before establishing his own firm, Azuma built the spectacular Tower House for his family. A six-story building built over a plot of land of about 20 square meters, the Tower House was immediatly regarded as a symbol of modern living and certainy his best creation.

Roland Bechmann (1919—2017) graduated from l’École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris in 1944. The same year, Bechmann was actively part of the resistance movement in the Alps. In 1950, with the great support of his fathe Lucien Bechmannr, he founded his own architecture bureau. Throughout his career, the architect completed multiple projects of various natures: schools, prefabricated structures, residential houses as well as dwellings. From 1966, Bechmann was the founder of Aménagement et Nature, the first journal in France to focus on green architecture.


Gottfried Böhm (1920—)
is the son of Dominikus Böhm, a German architect better known for his cutting-edge churches in Cologne, the Ruhr area, Swabia and Hesse. After graduating from Technical University of Munich in 1946, Böhm eventually studied sculpture, a discipline which dramatically influenced his design process. Between 1947 and 1955, he worked for his father before taking over his firm. He was also an active member of the Society for the Reconstruction of Cologne led by Rudolf Schwarz. During his years spent in NYC, Böhm met fellows German architects Walter Gropius and Mies Van Der Rohe whom he admired. Some describe his style as a blend of expressionist and post-Bauhaus styles. His concern for urban planning is evident in many of his projects, harping back on his emphasis on connections.

Christian Cacaut (1932—1982)
is among these architects who distinctly modernised France in the sixties. L’Église Saint-Pierre in Grand Quevilly is certainly his best achievement aside the King Faisal University in Al-Ahsa, Saudi Arabia’s first public university.

Jean-Louis Chanéac (1931—1993)
graduated from l’École du Bâtiment et des Arts Décoratifs de Grenoble, France. He is mostly known for his organic, mobile and accessible architecture. Passionate about Fordism and desiring to transfer its methods to building engineering, Chanéac first developed housing solutions using industrial, mass-produced and economical materials such as wood, metal or concrete as well as synthetic materials including resin, polyester, fibreglass, foam. Urbanism is also at the center of his concerns. In 1963, Chanéac draws the very first plan of Ville Cratère —Crater City whose habitable structures are mobile. In 1968, in conversation at l’Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts de Bruxelles, the architect reads out his Manifeste de l’Architecture Insurrectionelle and deplores both the conservatism and poor-quality which caracterise the productions at the time. A compilation of technical drawings, sketches and writings, the document advocates for the installation of suction cup inspired houses which would be attached to pre-existing structures.

Jacques Couëlle (1902—1996) led le Centre de Recherche de Structures Naturelles between 1945 and 1963. As its major research project, Couëlle was transferring biological organisms to house building cases. A connoisseur of archeology, he mostly got commissionned by wealthy clients throughout his career. In 1926, he built a castle-like residential house for an American art collector in Mouans-Sartoux, France. The project will extend to a modern hotel complex in 1959 at the behest of land developer Pierre Beckhardt. In 1964, Castellaras-Le-Vieux opens to public with its 86 luxury holiday cottages. In 1962, Couëlle gets offered the chance to build another fifty houses in Castellaras-Le-Neuf. By 1965, five remarkable prototypes will be completed. In conversation with friend engineer Robert Le Ricolais, Jacques Couëlle evoked madrepores, dens and corals as his main inspirations. He compares his housing creations to living organisms with a nervous system, a stomach, intestines and a heart. In 1970, with the building of his Monte Mano house in Sardinia, the architet went further into the organic aesthetic. Later on, he eventually added glazed ceramics and antic copper plates to the original concrete base.

Claude Costy (1931—) and Pascal Häusermann (1936—2011) met in 1958 at l’École d’Architecture de Genève, Switzerland, both graduating in 1962. After meeting architects Frank Lloyd Wright and Paolo Soleri when interning in Carmel, U.S., Claude Costy first got familiar with guniting method, mostly used to build swimming pools and tunnels. At the same time at the London Polytechnic, Häusermann was investigating on the construction of shell-like structures and rapidly came to the conclusion concrete as a material was offering a rather broad range of technical possibilities. In 1966, magazine Elle published an article celebrating the bubble houses the couple had started building. Pascal Häusermann and Claude Costy received up to 2,000 requests throughout the ten years following the magazine’s publication. The couple always praised for the economic side of the building of bubble houses. According to them, only one material is required, its footprint on the ground is rather minimal and they offer large aerial volumes. Nonetheless, both the design and the installaton of the windows for such structures represent a higher cost than for standar buildings. Between 1963 and 1972, Häusermann and Costy shared equal parts when working on their various projects ranging from residential houses to municipal buildings.

Charles Delfante (1926—2012) played an important role at the French Ministry of Reconstruction in the nineteen-fifties. In 1954, Delfante led the first urban planning for the small commune of Firminy, France. In 1961, he is appointed to lead the PADOG, an extensive urbanisation plan for the region of Lyon. He rapidly took over the major reconstruction plans for the city center as well, in particular for the business district of La Part Dieu. A connoisseur of the city’s identity and a real supporter to its modernisation, Delfante inaugurated in 1975 the Maurice Ravel Auditorium which he designed with friend architect Henri Pottier.

Marius Depont (1927—2017) devoted his career to both urbanism and sculpture. Son of a couple of artisans, Marius Depont worked actively in the building and modernisation of the suburbs of Paris, the city of Châteauroux and in the Loire and Centre regions. With friends architects and fellow communists Serge Lana and Claude Le Goas, Depont founded ATURBA, an urban planning bureau. The trio mostly operated in working-class suburbs of Paris such as Malakoff, Bagnolet, Saint-Denis and Montreuil. In Bobigny, north east of Paris, Depont got commissioned to design its town hall as well as the Église Saint-André.

Guillaume Gillet (1912—1987) is often described as the architect of the Trente Glorieuses in France. Throughout his impressive career, Gillet got consecutively appointed as architecture counsellor to the cities of Paris, Cannes, Monte-Carlo, Antibes. A large majority of his creations include modern style churches which he built in a particularly economically dynamic time. A certain faith in modernity characterises this period as well, which permitted a generation of architects including Gillet to design spectacularly modern churches. Gillet is buried in l’Église Notre-Dame de Royan which he always considered his greatest achievement.

Vittorio Giorgini (1926—2010) always placed nature and sculpture at the centre of his impetuous and versatile designs. Fascinated both by Modernists such as Le Corbusier and Leonardo Savioli as well as utopian housing solutions, Giorgini progressively developped a sculptural signature within the field of architecture. Giorgini’s design process was based on the direct observation of natural structures. His investigations began with the study of such curved systems as shells and membranes, curiosity about tensile structures and analysis of octahedral and dodecahedral geometrical shapes. Most of his essential concepts got gathered in his 1965 celebrated manifesto Spatiology. This research matches with Giorgini’s obsession for the minimal impact of a building on the ground.

Pascal Häusermann (1936—2011) and Claude Costy (1931—) met in 1958 at l’École d’Architecture de Genève, Switzerland, both graduating in 1962. After meeting architects Frank Lloyd Wright and Paolo Soleri when interning in Carmel, U.S., Claude Costy first got familiar with guniting method, mostly used to build swimming pools and tunnels. At the same time at the London Polytechnic, Häusermann was investigating on the construction of shell-like structures and rapidly came to the conclusion concrete as a material was offering a rather broad range of technical possibilities. In 1966, magazine Elle published an article celebrating the bubble houses the couple had started building. Pascal Häusermann and Claude Costy received up to 2,000 requests throughout the ten years following the magazine’s publication. The couple always praised for the economic side of the building of bubble houses. According to them, only one material is required, its footprint on the ground is rather minimal and they offer large aerial volumes. Nonetheless, both the design and the installaton of the windows for such structures represent a higher cost than for standar buildings. Between 1963 and 1972, Häusermann and Costy shared equal parts when working on their various projects ranging from residential houses to municipal buildings.

Paul Herbé (1903—1963) is a graduate from l’École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris. After some time assisting Bernard Zehrfuss in Tunis, Paul Herbé got offered to be in charge of the urbanisation of both Sudan and Niger in 1943. A former architect-counsellor to the French Ministry of Reconstruction, Herbé, throughout his career, completed various types of projects from churches to appartment blocks. His 1955, design for Algiers’ Cathédrale Notre-Dame is surely his most celebrated work.

VIadimir Kalouguine (1931—) is moslty known for the quirky design for his eponymous Résidences Kalouguine in the city of Angers, in the western north of France. Built between 1972 and 1975, the project was strongly inspired by the Maison Berron which he previously built in Dieulefit. The latter was led in collaboration with sculptor Maurice Chaudière and engineer Claude Bancon.

Ferdinand Keilmann (1907—1979) graduated from Höhere Technische Lehranstalt in Offenbach Am Main, Germany in 1927. After a three-year traineeship at the Aschaffenburg Building Authority, he joined the Reich Air Force construction department in April 1936. Keilmann eventually worked in the German Academy for Housing during WWII. On the eve of the denazification process, Keilmann was going through his most creative phase and his design for the Municipal Utility Tower he built in 1952 for the city of Bochum, western Germany, is often cited as example. Between 1950 and 1972, Keilmann made an important contribution to the cityscape as an architect in the building department of the city of Bochum.

Kiyonori Kikutake (1928—2011), often regarded as a visionary and mastermind at the leading edge of the Metabolism groupt, has been the recipient of numerous awards both in his native Japan and internationally. Conceived at the 1960 World Design Conference in Tokyo, metabolism was a Japanese-originating response to post world-war issues in urbanism in a country that now found itself with the necessity to re-build homes and cities. One of Kikutake’s great gifts as an architect was the ability to synthesize these diverse influences and to publish intellectually charged essays elaborating upon his built works. Among his most acclaimed designs, the Edo-Tokyo Museum, his Sky House and the Marine City remain unbelievably ingenious. His famous Marine City was conceived as a self-sustainable, earthquake-proof metropolis floating in the ocean. Breaking all traditional conventions and addressing issues important even today, the project is frequently cited as an example of the Metabolism movement.

Klaus Kirsten (1929—1969) is a graduate from Berlin’s Technischen Universität. Between 1957 and 1999, Kirsten and friend architect Heinz Nather headed together the Kirsten & Nather architecture office. Over the nineteen-fifties and nineteen-sixties, the office was particularly well reputed in the German capital. Each of their buildings, regardless of whether it is a factory building or a residential building, is characterized by an idiosyncratic as well as a confident handling of shapes and materials. Inspired by the avant-garde architecture in Italy and in the U.S. at the same period, the office built unconventional open structures in free forms.

Fritz Gerhard Mayr (1931—) is a graduate from the Akademie der bildenden Künste in Vienna, Austria. Before founding his own bureau, Mayr worked in the architectural offices of Roland Rainer and Wilhelm Hubatsch. Along with various designs for schools, his plans for the Wotruba Church in Vienna is surely is most acclaimed work. Designed in collaboration with sculptor Fritz Wotruba, this Roman Church is composed of massive raw concrete blocks.

Harald Hille (1921—) is a Norwegian architect better known for the minimal aesthetic of the churches he designed and built. Snarøya Church, Holmlia Church and Østenstad Church are among his most memorable projects.


Edmond Lay (1930—2019) is a graduate from l’École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris. Edmond Lay recalls strong memories of his first travels in North Africa where he got familiar with the peculiar use of natural light in traditional houses. Later on, he eventually travelled to the U.S. where he ended up teaching architecture at l’Université Notre-Dame-du-Lac in Southbend, Indiana in the first place and Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. During this time, Lay met Frank Lloyd Wright just before his death.  The two had just started considering a collaborative project together. Edmond Lay will rapidly become friend with Wright’s disciple Paolo Soleri whom with he will work from 1961. With Soleri, he got familiar with concepts such as sustainbility through utopian housing solutions. After refusing to become a tutor at prestigious Harvard University, Edmond Lay flew back to his native region in the south west of France, in order to found his own office. Multiple commissions reached the architect once back in Piétat, both public and private.

Jean Le Couteur (1916—2010) studied at l’École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris until the outbreak of WWII. Le Couteur eventually qualified as an architect in 1944 and met future associate Paul Herbé. In 1945 Bernard Zehrfuss, then heading the department of Architecture and Urban Planning in Tunisia, hired Le Couteur as an architect to work on a series of public buildings. In 1947, he established his own firm in Bizerte, Tunisia from where he led projects in Sudan and Niger with Herbé. Le Couteur and Herbé formed an official partnership in 1949, working on a variety of projects while based in the Ministry of Reconstruction and Urbanism.

Henri Mouette (1927—1995) graduated from l’Atelier Vivien in 1957. The same year, Mouette started working at the Atelier d’Architecture in Chourchevel, France where he met Hungarian sculptor Pierre Székely. The two first collaborated on the construction of the local church. Their second collaboration, on the design for the holiday resort of Beg-Meil, Britanny, strengthened their duo: Székely and Mouette worked together from 1959 to 1982. Between 1968 and 1972, the two designed some of their most emblematic houses: la Maison Deparis, la Maison Veyne and la Maison Fougère. More than his collaborator, Mouette was particularly interested in solar architecture and alternative energies.

Eduard Neuenschwander (1924—2013) was a Swiss architect who defined himself as an environmental designer. As a child, Neuenschwander was passionate about reptiles, moths and amphibians. After completing his Matura at the Rämibühl Cantonal School, he then graduated in biology and history at the University of Zurich. Inspired by his friendship with the son of art historian Siegfried Giedion, he then studied architecture at ETH, Zurich from 1946 from where he graduated in 1949. In 1949, on Giedion's recommendation, Neuenschwander went to Finland to meet the father of Scandinavian modernism Alvar Aalto. The two worked together until 1952. Eduard Neuenschwander and his wife Claudia eventually published a highly regarded monograph about Aalto. Rapidly after his return to his native country, he designed a couple of buildings in the canton of Zurich. His first major construction project was the re-design of the outdoor pool in Laufenburg. His plans for the new Rämibühl Cantonal School won the local architecture contest in 1960. The latter, which was the largest school in the country until 1969, is surely his most distinguished work.

Odd Østbye (1925—2009) was a Norwegian architect who mainly completed the cutting-edge design of several churches in the country including Kirkelandet Church, Åssiden Church, Karasjok Church. A professor at Oslo School of Architecture before getting appointed as director, Østbye teamed up with compatriot and fellow architect Harald Hille on the building of the Snarøya Church.


Giuseppe Perugini (1914—?)
graduated from Sapienza Università in Rome, Italy in 1941. Throughout his impetuous career, Giuseppe Perugini constantly expressed an obsession with new technologies and radical living solutions. As for his first major commission, Perugini designed the Mausoleo Delle Fosse Ardeatine in Rome, a mosoleum to the 1944 Ardeatine masscre by the Nazi troops. In 1971, Perugini, his wife Uga de Plaisant and their son Raynaldo, completed the construction of their Casa Sperimentale, one of the most radical yet enighmatic residential house ever imagined.

Henri Pottier (1912—2000) graduated from l’École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris in 1937. During the reconstruction of France, Pottier actively helped rebuild the cities of Vernon and Évreux, both located in Normandy. Betwen 1951 and 1955, Pottier was teaching architecture at École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris. In 1959, he joined forces with urbanist Raymond Lopez in the development of the Front de Seine area in Paris. This major project offered Pottier an unprecedented visibility in France. As an architect, Pottier built a varied range of structures from stadiums, hospitals, concert halls to universities.

Georges-Henri Pingusson (1894—1978) graduated from École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris in 1925. Throughout his unique and fruitful career, Pingusson worked along some of the most iconic figures in architecture including Jean Prouvé, Robert Mallet-Stevens or Le Corbusier. In 1932, Pingusson inaugurated his masterpiece of modernism Hôtel Latitude 43 in Saint-Tropez on the French Riviera. In the nineteen-twenties, Pingusson was the author of a long list of superb villas in the region. After WWII and until his death, Pingusson was an active figure in the field of architecture and politics in France. On April 12th 1962, the architect unveils Paris’ Mémorial des Martyrs de la Déportation in the presence of French president Général de Gaulle.

Junzo Sakakura 
(1901—1969) graduated in Art History from Tokyo  Imperial University in 1927. Almost coinciding with architect Kunio Maekawa’s return from Paris in 1930, Sakakura journeyed to France to enter Le Corbusier’s bureau. At this particular time, Japan was going through a specatular economic recession. He rose to the position of studio chief during his seven-year stay in the studio. Sakakura actively worked on the design of the villa Savoye, Le Corbusier’s modernist masterpiece. After he had just returned to Japan, Sakakura was commissioned to design the Japanese Pavilion at the 1937 Paris Exposition which was voted the Grand Prix. The president of the Architectural Association of Japan, Sakakura built among Tokyo’s most celebrated architectural achievements including the International House of Japan, the Institute of France-Japan, the National Museum of Western Art and the West Plaza of Shinjuku Station and its Underground Parking Lot.

Joachim Schürmann (1926—) graduated from the Technical University of Darmstadt, Germany, in 1949. Schürmann founded his first architectural firm in Cologne in 1956. In four decades, Schürmann has won more than fifty prizes in competitions with designs for buildings that were predominantly built in Cologne and the region. His legacy includes several private houses, including his own, office and administration buildings, schools and also religious buildings. His works are characterized by a clear design language in the tradition of Mies Van Der Rohe, although some have brutalist accents.

François Stahly (1911—2006) was a German-French sculptor who received numerous commissions for public works both in Europe and America, where Nelson Rockefeller was one of his greatest patrons. While Stahly was inspired by the proclamations of a utopian harmony and universal equilibrium, he was not drawn to utilitarian aesthetic that was popular in the nineteen-thirties. Following the Liberation of Paris, where he settled, Stahly became involved with several architectural projects. His sculptures are better known for their organic appearance as Stahly was fascinated by obscure forms and patterns in nature. From the nineteen-fifties, he began to establish an international reputation. During the years Stahly spent in the U.S. working on commissions, he was consecutively a lecturer at prestigious universities including Berkeley, Harvard, and Stanford. 

Léon Stynen 
(1899—1990) contributed to a series of major residential and cultural additions to his hometown of Antwerp, Belgium. His designs reflected on the architectural trends of the time: from art deco in the nineteen-twenties, modernism in the nineteen-thirties to functionalism in the nineteen-fifties.The 1929 waterfront casino in Knokke was the first of four casinos in Belgium designed by Stynen, and helped establish his early reputation in the country. Completed in 1963, his BP Building is a feat of engineering. Described as a severed pyramid, the unusual structure of this 1966 Sint-Rita Church  is deceptively complicated. Occupying a site in Zandberg, a suburb just outside Kortrijk, this raw concrete church offers a lighting effect that illuminates the heads and shoulders of the congregation.

Pierre Székely 
(1923—2001) was a Hungarian sculptor and architect. From 1941, Székely was a disciple of artist Hanna Dallos, whom he admired, in her Budapest atelier until she was assassinated by the Nazis.
He got familiar with stone-cutting when deported to a working camp in Germany from where he finally escaped. After some time working as a graphist in Budapest, Székely left to Paris in 1946.Throughout his unique career, Székely designed and built several dwellings, leisure infrastructures, cultural and religious projects. He is also remembered for his peculiar objets d’art ranging from sculptures of various materials, drawings, paintings and tapestries. In 1991, an outdoor museum was opened in Pécs, Hungary, devoted to Pierre Székely’s œuvre.


Kenzo Tange 
(1913—2005) is a graduate from the University of Tokyo. After World War II, Tange worked as an urban planner, helping to rebuild Hiroshima, and gained international attention in 1949, when his design for the Hiroshima Peace Center and Memorial Park was selected. Tange continued to work in and theorize about urban planning throughout the nineteen-fifties. His ‘Plan for Tokyo 1960’, a massive unrealized structure spanning across the bay of Tokyo, heavily influenced the Metabolist movement which he then strongly supported. Although his style was radically modernist, Tange would frequently recall Japan history and culture as a source of inspiration. The Saint-Mary

Gérard Thurnauer 
(1926—2014) was a graduate from l’École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris, where he met his future business partners Pierre Riboulet and Pierre Vivien. In 1949, at the behest of  architect Michel Ecochard, the three flew to Morocco to work on the national urban planning. The trio completed their first mission between 1949 and 1950 and their second one between 1951 and 1952. As for their final project, the three proposed a distinguished proposal for the University of Fes. Thurnauer joined Ecochard and his univeristy fellows for the building of the University of Karachi, Pakistan. From the dissolution of ATM — Atelier de Montrouge which he founded with Vivien and Riboulet, Thurnauer built several dwellings in Paris and its region. He worked together with Antoine Aygalinc from 1986 to 2001. Between 1984 to 1999, Thurnauer was in charge of the modernisatin of the Paris neighbourhood of la Goutte d’Or. A defender of the working classes, the architect co-directed the 75021 association which allowed a group of fifteen architects to publish their urban planning manifesto on the Grand Paris. A connoisseur of visual arts, he was a member of the Centre National des Arts Plastiques. 

Alicia Penalba (1913—1982) was a graduate from School of Fine Arts in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Alicia Penalba left her native country for Paris in 1948 where she started to work with Russian sculptor Ossip Zadkine. From 1952, she began to establish a reputation in the French capital where her sculptors are featured at several group shows. Her aesthetic was clear: a form of biomorphic abstract sculpture with architectonic undertones. Her sculpture sought the company of architecture: she created pieces to be featured in buildings designed by architects.

Antonin Raymond 
(1888—1976) was a graduate from Vysoká Škola Technická, Prague. He eventually completed his studies in Trieste, Italy, before settling in NYC where he first worked with architect Cass Gilbert. As a young architect, he worked on some the of most extraordinary buildings of the first quarter of that century. His experience with Cass Gilbert gave him an insight into the structural and textural properties of concrete. Frank Lloyd Wright, whom he admired, agreed to employ him from May 1916. Raymond first got familiar with Japan through heir collaborative work on the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo, Numerous disagreements between the two rose during this particular project. In February 1921, he set up the American Architectural and Engineering Company in Tokyo with Leon Whittaker Slack. After the wars, he would live and practice both in the U.S. and Japan for the next twenty-five years, marking the most productive period of his remarkable career.

Jean Renaudie 
(1925—1981) was a graduate from l’École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris. An architect and urban planner, essayist and tireless militant for better living for all, Jean Renaudie developed an original approach to the urban phenomenon. In 1956, he joined the firm of Philippe Ecochard where he met Pierre Riboulet, Gérard Turnhauer and Jean-Louis Véret. Together, they founded the ATM — Atelier de Montrouge in 1958, which Renaudie eventually left in 1968. From an early stage of his independent career, Renaudie expressed a unique use of geometry within in designs. Based on the repetition and the combination of geometric forms, he designed new and heterogeneous configurations for housing with brutalist accents intended to respond to human diversity and to be adaptable to everyone’s needs.

Pierre Riboulet
(1928—2003) graduated from l’École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris in 1952. In 1958, Riboulet, fellow architects Jean Renaudie, Gérard Thurnauer and Jean-Louis Véret found ATM — Atelier de Montrouge, a communal architecture association. In 1979, Riboulet’s design for the Hôpital Robert-Debré in Paris prove to be a turning point to his independant career. In 1981, the four behind ATM wins the Grand prix national de l'architecture under the chairmanship of the Ministry of Culture. Riboulet taught at École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées between 1979 and 1997. Throughout his career, he was mostly commissioned by public procurements for the building of hospitals and libraries.

Victor Vasarely 
(1906—1997) distinguished himself from contemporary art with the creation of a new movement: optical art. The evolution of his life of work is inherently coherent, progressing from graphic art to the artist’s determination to promote a social art that is accessible to all. Born in Hungary, Vasarely enrolled in Muhely, known as the Bauhaus of Budapest. The impact of Bauhaus teachings on Vasarely’s lifetime of work would turn out to be considerable. Like a number of his compatriots, Vasarely left Hungary and settled in Paris in 1930 to work as a graphic artist for advertising agencies. By the late nineteen-forties, Vasarely laid the foundations of his aesthetic: a definition of the world through pure forms and colors.

Jean-Louis Véret
(1927—2011) was a graduate from l’École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris, where he met his future business partners Pierre Riboulet and Gérard Thurnauer. In 1949, at the behest of  architect Michel Ecochard, the three flew to Morocco to work on the national urban planning. The trio completed their first mission between 1949 and 1950 and their second one between 1951 and 1952. As for their final project, the three proposed a distinguished proposal for the University of Fes. After working alongside with Le Corbusier on his Ahmedabad project in India, Véret joined Ecochard and his univeristy fellows for the building of the University of Karachi, Pakistan. Through this project, Véret met Jean Raudie. In 1958, the four founded ATM — Atelier de Montrouge which will be active until 1981. The same year, Véret founded his own architectural firm. In 1968, he is appointed Architect for Civilian Buildings by André Malraux. In addition to his pesonal projects, Véret was a regular lecturer at Harvard University, l’École d’Architecture de Nancy and l'École Nationale Supérieure d'Architecture de Paris-La Villette.

Roger Vissuzaine 
(1909—1993) first graduated from l'École Régionale d'Architecture de Nantes. After a second course at l’École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris, Vissuzaine, a resistant, was an active member of the Front National des Architectes. In 1966 and 1967, Vissuzaine built two dwellings in the residential city of Cachan. In 1970, with his flying saucer-shaped La Soucoupe, a giant sports hall, the architect brough an unprecedented twist of modernity to Saint-Nazaire.

Pierre Vivien (1909—1999) graduated from École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris in 1939. From an early stage in his career, Vivien expressed an interest in urbanism and public buildings. In 1944, Vivien is appointed Architect for Civilian Buildings by the French government and will handle the ambitious re-building of the Grand Palais in Paris. The next year, Vivien settles in Boulogne-Sur-Mer, a coastal city in Northern France which was heavily bombed during WWII. Aged 36, the architect is appointed to re-build the city where he will stay until 1958. From 1958, Vivien will actively be part of the modernisation of Strasbourg. His urban plan for the Hautepierre discrict, connecting the surrounding villages to the city of Strasbourg,  is among his most acclaimed projects. Throughout the nineteen-sixties, both his devotation to the Athens Charter and his concepts on urbanisation mutated.

Yōji Watanabe (1923—1983) was the son of a long line of carpenters. Watanabe defied his father and enrolled at thec, where he studied until 1941. In 1959, following some years working consecutively at the Nihon Steel Group and architectural firm Kume and Partners, Watanabe enrolled at Waseda University in Tokyo. Soon after, he opened his won architectural bureau. Watanabe's most famous building is which is the Sky Building #3 which he built in 1972 in the busy Shinjuku district in Tokyo, using a high proportion of steel.


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The listed material on WASURETA — meaning forgotten in Japanese, has in common a certain emphasis on engineering. A pivot point in the design of a building of any type, engineering, in the present case studies, permitted the creation of both aesthetically and technically unconventional structures. Although functionalism distinctly stands out as the main feature which characterizes them, a subtle communion between function and aesthetic appears. Functionalism, as a principle, responds primarily to human needs: from activities which are essential to our existence to health-related moments. It should also not be restricted solely to interior living since parks, outdoor sculptures and fountains present benefits within their surroundings. Within the urban space of the industrial era, without any symbolic landmark nor references to human forms, public sculptures and buildings’ facades lost their commemorative or decorative functions. What space is given to living forces in inertia and chaos; to these achievements which the market cannot get hold of and which effectively counter the monotony of urban architecture? Focusing on proportions, the architecture of today broke with the ornamental traditions. Placing aesthetics to the same ground as functions in a rare architectural vocabulary, the present exemples are nowadays in varied conditions. Although a great portion of them are still in use and preserved in their original design, a certain number of them got abandoned, vandalized, squatted or unjustly demolished by municipalities. This extensive data includes a varied range of constructions from unachieved prototypes, residential houses, public and social structures, government buildings, companies headquarters to places of worship.  



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