- André Lurçat
André Lurçat (August 27, 1894 - July 11, 1970) was a French modernist architect, landscape architect, furniture designer and city planner, a founding member of
CIAM , and active in the rebuilding in French cities afterWorld War II . He was the brother of visual artistJean Lurçat .Lurçat was born in
Bruyères , studied at theEcole des Beaux-Arts inNancy , worked in the office ofRobert Mallet-Stevens , began building a series of houses in the 1920s, and became interested in the principles ofsocial housing to address the French housing crisis between the wars. In 1928 he was a founding member of theCongrès International d'Architecture Moderne (International Congress of Modern Architecture). Along withAdolf Loos ,Richard Neutra ,Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky and others, he demonstrated a family residence at the ViennaWerkbund exhibition of 1932, produced his best-known villa Hefferlin atVille-d'Avray , then went toMoscow to work for the Soviet government 1934-1937.Lurçat is known for advancing the cause of modernism in landscape architecture; he took a position, contrary to the proponents of "
Existenzminimum ", that all social housing must include gardens. He is also known for his planned postwar reconstruction of the French city ofMaubeuge (1945). He was a professor at theÉcole nationale supérieure des Arts Décoratifs and theÉcole nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris from 1945-1947, and a member of board of architecture of the Ministry of Reconstruction and Urban Development.Selected buildings
Villa Guggenbuhl (1927), Rue Nansouty, Paris (GIS: +48.823325, +2.335326)
Selected writings
* "Architecture", Paris : Au Sans Pareil, 1929.
* "Formes, composition et lois d'harmonie : Eléments d'une science de l'esthétique architecturale", Paris, Editions Vincent, Fréal & Cie, 1953.
* "Œuvres récentes", Paris, Editions Vincent, Fréal & Cie, 1961.References
* Jean-Louis Cohen, "André Lurçat (1894-1970) : l'autocritique d'un moderne", IFA, 1995.
* Pierre end Robert Joly, "L'architecte André Lurçat", Picard, 2000.
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