Auguste Perret by Karla Britton

Auguste Perret (1874–1954)

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 given its own idiom. Le Corbusier described this building as ‘a foretaste of the modern world’.

Committed constructor and innovator

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 projects, Auguste Perret caught the attention of a generation searching for a new architecture appropriate to the twentieth century. A committed constructor and innovator, Auguste Perret simultaneously adhered to structural classicist principles, continuously resisting the more transitory aspects of the avant-garde.

Study of Auguste Perret

This monograph is the first sustained study of Auguste 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 an insight into his craft and its artistic social priciples.

Karla Britton

Karla Britton is Director of the New York/ Paris program of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation in Paris.
ISBN: 0714840432