Pol Abraham - architeria.eu

ARCHITECTURE EXHIBITION
Centre Pompidou
Paris, France

Pol Abraham
5 March - 2 June 2008
GALERIE DU MUSEE, LEVEL 4

Exploiting the archives recently acquired by the Musée National d’Art Moderne, the Centre Pompidou is to
present the first monographic exhibition to be devoted to the French architect Pol Abraham (1891-1966).
More than 200 original drawings, archive photographs and slide-shows will document the buildings of an
architect who played a leading role in his profession for over half a century. The exhibition will also include
a model sanatorium room with its furniture by Jean Prouvé.

Produced between 1916 and 1966, Pol Abraham’s modern and idiosyncratic work won him a special place
in the history of architecture, alongside such acknowledged masters as Le Corbusier, André Lurçat and
Robert Mallet Stevens.

Pol Abraham trained at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and was awarded his diploma in 1920, working first
on the reconstruction of regions devastated by the First World War. Trained in the use of reinforced concrete,
he saw his work as an ongoing reflection on principles of construction, close to that of the Perret brothers.
Having written a thesis on Viollet-le-Duc and mediaeval methods of architectural construction, he appropriated
the rationalist eclecticism of the 19th century, giving it a contemporary turn through the use of new materials
and methods. He designed a number of private houses in Brittany, highly innovative in form, and was also
responsible for key examples of Modern French architecture in Paris and its region. Among the latter are the
Villa Thoyer-Rozat at Louveciennes – the subject of a publication by Bruno Taut in 1927 – and the Square
de l’Alboni, Boulevard Raspail and Collège Montmorency buildings.

In the 1930s, he was responsible for four major sanatorium projects, entire neighbourhoods comprising spas,
treatment centres, accommodation blocks and administrative buildings. In their reinforced concrete
construction, bright colours and diversity of formal solutions these are veritable manifestos for Abraham’s
own understanding of architecture. From 1942, he worked for the French Ministry of Reconstruction
and Urban Planning on the reconstruction of the city of Orléans, where he experimented with different
methods of modular prefabrication, with results as striking as those of Auguste Perret in Le Havre or
André Lurçat at Maubeuge. As a specialist in modular construction, he was later appointed architectural
adviser to the French Education Ministry and built many schools. In the 1950s, he was asked to design
the infrastructure for the first wireless telecommunications network in France, designing the emblematic
Meudon Tower and a number of relay towers and booster stations. This exhibition thus offers
the opportunity to discover, through unpublished archival records, the work of an idiosyncratic modern
architect of the first rank.

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CREDITS:
Text: Centre Pompidou
Photographs:

20 - Portrait de Pol Abraham, 1950, circa.
© Paris, Centre Pompidou, Mnam-Cci, Bibliothèque Kandinsky, fonds Pol Abraham

02 - Immeuble boulevard Raspail, façade en fin de construction, Paris, 1930-1931
projet réalisé ; en collaboration avec P. Cadré.
Photographe : Salaün.
© Paris, Centre Pompidou, Mnam-Cci, Bibliothèque Kandinsky, fonds Pol Abraham

03 - Immeuble de rapport avec garage, boulevard Raspail, Paris, 1930-1931
projet réalisé ; en collaboration avec P. Cadré. Perspective, mine de plomb sur calque, 47 x 45 cm
© Paris, Centre Pompidou, Mnam-Cci, Bibliothèque Kandinsky, fonds Pol Abraham