Auguste Perret

Description

French architect Auguste Perret (1874-1954) was a pioneering precursor to the Modern movement. His career is inextricably linked to the constructional technique of reinforced concrete: in works such as his 1903 apartment building in Rue Franklin, Paris, concrete – a material that previously had been perceived as common and industrial – was reinvented, handled artistically and granted its own idiom. Le Corbusier described this building as ‘a foretaste of the modern world’.

With his projects in France and abroad – such as the Musée des Travaux Publics in Paris, the Church of Notre-Dame at Raincy and many other domestic, industrial and urban buildings – Perret caught the attention of a generation searching for a new architecture appropriate to the twentieth century. A committed constructor and innovator, Perret simultaneously adhered to structural classicist principles, continuously resisting the more transitory aspects of the avant-garde.

This monograph is the first sustained study of Perret in English, richly illustrated with new colour photography as well as drawings and photographs from the Perret archive. It also includes an appendix of Perret’s aphorisms and other writings, which provide a penetrative insight into his craft and its artistic social priciples.

Karla Britton is Director of the New York/ Paris programme of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation in Paris.

“Perret emerges as witty, wise and social minded, the deft first user of concrete, justifiably admired by ‘Corb’.”—Art Newspaper

“[An] erudite exploration of Perret’s output… Britton’s study presents a fascinating, authoritative figure.”—RIBA Journal