Fernand Pouillon

[2]:6 His stated goal was to meet human needs, and especially, those of middle-class and poorer families who faced severe shortages of dignified housing in the post-War period.

At the age of 22, he built his first project (le Palais Albert I) in Aix-en-Provence (at the time, an architecture degree was not required for such a role).

[3][5]:206 Due to damage from the War and rapid economic and population growth, post-War France had a pressing need for housing and infrastructure development.

The tensions among the various actors (ministries and other government agencies, competing architects, construction companies and the citizens whose dwellings had been destroyed during the war) reflected differing views on design and aesthetics, cost control and deadlines, as well as professional rivalries.

[10] During this time, Pouillon perfected, along with his partners in the building trades, a construction system based largely on natural materials and close coordination between builders, artisans and artists.

The system involved designs that (in addition to responding to human wants and needs) could be efficiently built using materials and technical components that had been standardised in advance with project suppliers.

[3][4][7] His architecture firm was technically proficient in construction (which was unusual at the time) and capable of managing a project from conception to commercialisation.

He earned a great deal of money and showed it—at one point, he owned a Bentley, an Alfa Romeo, two chateaux, a house in Alger, a mansion in Paris and a yacht.

[8]:9 At that time, Pouillon's practice came to be increasingly based in Paris, where, over the 1955-1962 period, he embarked on a number of huge housing projects in the Parisian suburbs: Pantin, Montrouge, Meudon and Boulogne-Billancourt.

Pouillon was also accused of violating securities law in order to side step rules separating architects’ roles from project construction, finance and commercialisation - that is, he was charged with using false identities and corporate entities to participate in the development and finance of the Point du Jour project.

He was found guilty, but was partially acquitted on appeal, and received a sentence that was approximately the time he had already spent in detention while awaiting trial.

After his release, his finances and his health were ruined and his already precarious marriage was over (his wife had tried to commit suicide twice during the trial and was briefly imprisoned because she was suspected of having helped Pouillon to escape).

[9] By the 1970s, influential people in France were having second thoughts about the treatment accorded to Pouillon: In 1971, he was pardoned by the French President Georges Pompidou.

[8]:101 He spent the last years of his life at Château de Belcastel, a medieval castle in the Aveyron department, which he had restored together with Algerian craftsmen.