Auguste Perret Biography, Buildings and Best Books

Auguste Perret (1874-1954) was a French architect and builder who pioneered the architectural use of reinforced concrete. With his brothers he developed a structural classicism of frames, columns and infill panels, seen in the apartment building at 25 bis rue Franklin, the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées and the church of Notre-Dame du Raincy, and after the Second World War he rebuilt the centre of Le Havre, now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Brussels, Paris and the family firm

Perret was born in Ixelles, Brussels, in 1874, the son of a building contractor. He studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris but left without a diploma to work in the family firm, later Perret Frères with his brothers Gustave and Claude, which built the buildings he designed.

Concrete classicism

The apartment building at 25 bis rue Franklin (1903) showed its concrete frame clad in ceramic panels. The Théâtre des Champs-Élysées (1913) and the church of Notre-Dame du Raincy (1923), with its slender columns and walls of concrete and coloured glass, made him famous. The young Le Corbusier worked in his office in 1908 and 1909.

Public buildings and Le Havre

In the 1930s he built the Mobilier National and the Museum of Public Works in Paris, now the Economic, Social and Environmental Council. From 1945 he led the reconstruction of Le Havre, rebuilt on a modular concrete grid with the church of Saint-Joseph and the town hall. He received the RIBA Royal Gold Medal in 1948 and the AIA Gold Medal in 1952, and died in Paris in 1954.