Henri Prost

See also: Prost

Henri Prost , born with Paris the February 25th 1874 and dead the July 16th 1959, is a Architecte Urbaniste French.

He is cofounder in 1911 of the French company of the town planners with the architects Donat Alfred Agache, Mr. Auburtin, A. Bérard, Eugene Hénard, Leon Jaussely, A. Parenty, the engineer Jean Claude Nicolas Forestier, the landscape designer Edouard Redont.

He is member of the central Company of the architects in 1930. Starting from 1932, it Co-animates with Jean Royer the review Urbanisme . He is elected member of the Académie of the Art schools in 1933.

He is special principal of architecture of 1929 with 1959.

Although he wrote much, he left few traces published, his productions being regarded as pertaining to the gray literature (technical). Appear exemplary of town planning culturalist in his taking into account of the local heritage, it is not however to radically oppose to modern town planning progressist, insofar as its plans were not free from a modernity interpreted with tact and discretion . Moreover, the true and durable collaboration of all its team of architects (with the Morocco as in France), makes it possible to characterize this town planning like indissociable architectural work.

The art of the urban composition to the service of the communities

One could leave the idea that Prost represents with wonder in its Moroccan achievements of the Twenties an exemplary urban art but quickly condemned by a considerable stressing of the division of the labor induced by the inescapable development of the large agglomerations . It is with discretion that the town-planner answers the programs of the marshal Lyautey, recognized and lit politician who controls colonial Morocco then. Its work is then to project new cities on released grounds, but registered in a local context which he studies and which he tries out while living there. Its plans define at the same time alignments on public space and compartmental cutting as well as the small islands to be built.

In a logic of urban dynamism, the latter are thought like “densifiables”, on the back of the piece, so that public space is not disturbed. Thus, the management and the organization of the rise of the Moroccan cities such Reduction, call more one intelligent actualization of the Prost plan that they do not invalidate the broad outlines of the initial party of them .

Prost: a very particular pedagogy

However, he hardly appreciates that the Urbaniste is relegated to the row of analyst and advising. Its interventions on the Riviera, as on the Paris region, are judged, by Prost itself, as being: blocked by the negative spirit which has just made collapse the political regime of France . It had early included/understood the need to disenclose Paris, but it did not want, contrary to the modernistic thought, to answer it only by road axes, but in a treatment of the suburbs like main doors of the capital.

Proposing a plan resembling curiously the Plane of occupation of the grounds (POS), he recalls, as in Casablanca, the close relation which he conceives between esthetics and town planning, and, more generally, he insisted on the duty to take into account the multiple actors who make the city, would be this only fact that the capital was not even equipped with a correct inventory of fixtures.

Worse is in Istanbul, where he wonders about the interest which the public authorities carry places from there with respect to its plans. However, in Turkey as in France, it calls upon the local specialists (architects, doctors, sociologists), in order to be advised and to form them to take its changing.

It is in the same spirit as it forms services of Urbanisme (the first was created in Metz) and claims that is made conscientiously a reliable and regularly brought up to date inventory of fixtures. It is him, undoubtedly the first, which calls some explicitly with the use of air sights, which make it possible to enter more in-depth the composition of the city, mainly inside the small islands, often unknown of the public services and yet to take into account, according to him, in any reflection of planning.

Once professor at the Institute of Town planning of the University of Paris (today IUP, Paris 12), it will confirm this teaching vocation by impassioning his students on truly practical cases of studies. It is besides by its pupils that the thought of Henri Prost reaches us best.

Principal projects and achievements

Of its works, we can retain mainly its many plans:

Distinctions

  • 1902 : First Grand Prix of Rome.

  • 1910 : First price of the international contest of town planning of Antwerp.

See too

References

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