Fernand Pouillon et l'Algérie, FP_A0224/Corne d'Or, Tipasa

The Swiss photographer Leo Fabrizio has been working for ten years on the work of the French architect Fernand Pouillon (1912-1986). If the French architect enjoys a certain recognition today for the quality of his achievements of the Old Port and the Tourette complex in Marseille, or more recently for his Parisian buildings, the immensity of his work, and the determination of his commitment, remain no less unknown. Leo Fabrizio has taken an interest in the face of this multiple and atypical architecture, far from the dominant dogmas, more attached to taking into account the happiness of future inhabitants than to producing prestigious works. In Mémoires d'un architecte, Fernand Pouillon wrote: "For a long time now, I had focused my life as a builder on the social role of architecture: above all, to build cities for the improvement of the human condition, by putting comfort and beauty within everyone's reach. This determination and commitment will make him realize what constitutes the largest ensemble built by a single man in the twentieth century. From this field of investigation, which is as excessive as it is little documented, Leo Fabrizio has put together a corpus of more than seven hundred negatives taken with a camera, which forms an unpublished iconography of Fernand Pouillon's achievements. This corpus is the result of a relentless investigation conducted since 2014, with a very particular focus on the two periods of the architect's interventions in Algeria: first between 1953 and 1957, then between 1965 and 984. These two periods constitute a remarkable field of study by the nature of the commission given to the architect: social housing for the first, tourism for the second. In all cases, however, the architecture is the result of a constant determination and a permanent commitment to this social component so dear to the architect, as well as a particular attention to the cultures and the lands where he builds.