Tony Garnier Biography, Buildings and Best Books

Tony Garnier (1869-1948) was a French architect and urban planner. His Cité Industrielle, an ideal industrial city of reinforced concrete drawn while he was at the French Academy in Rome and published in 1917, anticipated the zoning and building types of the modern city. Back in his native Lyon he built many of its public works, from the vast La Mouche abattoirs, now the Halle Tony Garnier, to a hospital, a stadium and a housing district.

Lyon, Paris and Rome

Garnier was born in Lyon in 1869 and studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. He won the Prix de Rome in 1899, and while at the Villa Medici he worked on the Cité Industrielle instead of the usual reconstructions of ancient monuments.

The Cité Industrielle

His plan for an industrial city of 35,000 people separated industry, housing, health and leisure, and showed houses, schools and public buildings in plain reinforced concrete. Published as Une Cité Industrielle in 1917, it influenced Le Corbusier and the planning of the twentieth century.

Building Lyon

With the support of the mayor Édouard Herriot he built the La Mouche abattoirs and cattle market (1909-1928), the Grange Blanche hospital, the Gerland stadium and the États-Unis housing district. He also designed the town hall of Boulogne-Billancourt (1934). He died near Marseille in 1948.