Auguste perret

Auguste Perret (February 12, 1874 in Ixelles - February 25, 1954 in Paris) was a French architect. Along with Tony Garnier, he was the most representative and innovative architect of the new French classicism that appeared in Paris at the beginning of the 20th century. He carried out an academic architecture, with a neoclassical mentality, without presenting an advance in the way of composing or decorating.

Biography

The son of a commoner stonemason exiled in Belgium, Auguste Perret was born in Ixelles. He studied architecture at the School of Fine Arts (Paris) and later began working in his father's construction company, specializing in reinforced concrete.

Professional career

In 1905 Perret founded the studio A. & G. Perret Architectes, and a little later with his other brother Claude, the construction company Perret Frères Entrepreneurs.

The starting point of Perret's architecture is the building on Avenue de Wagram in Paris, built in 1902, in which he manifests a return to the classical tradition. His first important work was the apartment building on Rue Franklin, also in Paris, a project from 1903 that presents a facade composed in a neoclassical manner based on plastic values, maintaining the alignment on the ground floor. The structure manifests itself as an element seen on the façade that marks its subsequent way of doing. This work presents rooms composed with historicism, also following the academic compositional method of short partitions with large spaces. It is the announcement of the use of concrete on the façade and the separation of the structure from the filling to leave the architecture flown. The use of concrete as a valid element in any building structure, and as an ornament on the facades are key aspects of his work. In his Garage Pontheu project from 1905, he used concrete again in a similar way, also making use of large glass infills, leaving the grid visible on the façade.

Another work of special interest by Perret is the Theater des Champs-Élysées, built in 1911 in Paris, which was first the work of Henry van de Velde. It is a work that shows the neoclassical character, which has a concrete skeleton. During the 1920s, Perret dedicated himself to exploiting the possibilities of concrete to achieve a new image through stained glass windows made of whitewashed concrete in churches, the most notable example of which was the church of Our Lady of Le Raincy. In 1922 he rehabilitated the exterior walls of the Notre-Dame de Paris cathedral, using this technique.

In 1937 Perret built the Museum of Public Works, and in the postwar years he was mainly concerned with what was his last project, the church of Saint Joseph in Le Havre.

Legacy

Many consider Perret as the father of concrete, since he was the first to use it as a constructive and structural element, as well as an ornamental and distributor element that sometimes presents nude to the exterior in some of his works. This has been reinterpreted and used for the same purpose by a large number of architects after Perret.