Committed, cultured, brilliant and sometimes scathing polemicist, but also courteous and very attentive behind his sparkling blue eyes, Paul Chemetov, a major figure in architecture and urban planning in France for more than fifty years, died on June 16 in his Parisian home. He was 95 years old.
The man who, until recently, still worked in his agency, was the last giant of the social cause in the service of architecture. This position made him one of the most sought-after figures when public debate began on the future of construction in our country. And particularly in terms of housing – “the civic exercise par excellence”reminded him of the former Minister of Culture and Communication Jean-Jacques Aillagon, when he presented him, in June 2016, with the insignia of Commander of the Legion of Honor.
At the same time, the strategy for architecture implemented by the Ministry of Culture to accompany the bill for Freedom of Creation, Architecture and Heritage (LCAP) gave it the opportunity to continue, at the head of the “Develop” working group, a reflection that is always very well-founded on the ills and shortcomings of our built world and its consequences on the city and its users, one of its main concerns.
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Paul Chemetov was born on September 6, 1928 in the 16e district of Paris. He is the son of a couple of Russian origin, Tamara Lvovna Blumine (1904-1985) and Alexandre Chemetoff (1898-1981), graphic designer, typographer and illustrator for young people better known under the name Chem. His son would later say he was influenced by his father’s famous work Everyone has their own house (1933), a game album still in print inviting children to associate, using images, children around the world with their respective habitats. The war years were marked by the exile of his family far from Paris – his mother was Jewish. His father refused to work in the Vichy services. By his own admission, this attitude gave the boy he was then “a human, moral and political lesson”.
History buff
In 1946, the teenager fond of history who dreamed of being a philosopher joined the Communist Party and entered the Ecole nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris. A few years earlier, he had been influenced by the reading of When the cathedrals were white (1937) by Le Corbusier. “This first contact convinced me that there was no architecture possible without the strength of conviction and commitment”he says to Pierre Lefèvre and Jimi Cheynut, authors of the book Architects’ journey (ed. Le Cavalier Bleu, 2012).
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