Auguste Perret

Auguste Perret (1874 to 1954) was a French architect, born in Ixelles, Belgium, and a pioneer of the architectural use of reinforced concrete. He trained in his family's building firm and at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, which he left without a diploma, and he showed the concrete frame openly in the apartment building on rue Franklin (1903) and the Ponthieu garage (1906). His best known buildings include the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, described as the first Art Deco building in Paris, the church of Notre-Dame du Raincy (1922 to 1923) and the Mobilier National. After the Second World War he directed the reconstruction of the centre of Le Havre, which UNESCO declared a World Heritage Site in 2005. Le Corbusier worked in his office from 1908 to 1910. Perret won the Royal Gold Medal in 1948 and the AIA Gold Medal in 1952.