François Spoerry

François Spoerry (born December 28, 1912 in Mulhouse , Alsace , † January 11, 1999 in Port Grimaud ) was a French architect .

Life

The son of a wealthy industrial family earned his diploma from the École des Beaux Arts in Marseille in 1943 . As a member of the Resistance , he and his sister Anne were arrested and deported to Buchenwald and Dachau concentration camps. After the war he opened an architecture office in his hometown and was heavily involved in its reconstruction. Among other things, he built the Wilson Tower, the Europaturm (the latter with a rotating restaurant at the top) and high-rise buildings, which differed significantly from his later realizations.

Spoerry became widely known for turning away from the urbanism of the Congrès International d'Architecture Moderne (CIAM) and turning to traditional models of urban design, in the case of Port-Grimaud, which was modeled on Venice . In contrast to the little later architecture of postmodernism , the precursor of which it can be considered, this reversal shows no ironic break.

A square in Port Grimaud and - since June 2007 - a street in Mulhouse are named after Spoerry .

Major works

Europaturm in Mulhouse

Cité lacustre of Port Grimaud in the bay of Saint-Tropez
Port-Cergy in Cergy-Pontoise
Europaturm in Mulhouse
Puerto Escondido in Mexico ,
Port-Liberté near New York City
Porto Cervo in Sardinia
Port-Louis, Louisiana
Holiday complex Bendinat in Palma

Fonts

with Paul Léauté : Une ville qui réduirait la violence. In: Sécurité et liberté. La documentation française, 1980.
L'Architecture douce. Edition Robert Laffont, 1977.

literature

Geoffrey Broadbent: Emerging Concepts in Urban Space Design. Taylor & Francis, 1996, ISBN 0-419-16150-3 , pp. 230-234.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME	Spoerry, François
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	French architect
DATE OF BIRTH	December 28, 1912
PLACE OF BIRTH	Mulhouse , Alsace
DATE OF DEATH	January 11, 1999
Place of death	Port Grimaud