"Events pass but life’s work lives on" might well have been the motto of architect Fernand Pouillon.

This monographical exhibition gave people the chance to discover a controversial figure and an outstanding architect whose rich and varied work is little known. Pouillon’s fortunes turned full circle: success, scandal, prison, exile, rehabilitation and fame. Love him/hate him: His name leaves few people indifferent.

These would be but anecdotes if his architectural creations were not what they are: complex, often disconcerting, brilliant. Pouillon's work ranges from reconstruction schemes around the Vieux-Port in Marseilles, to projects in Aix-en-Provence, from housing estates in Algiers, to apartment houses in the Parisian region. Pouillon favoured building with stone. He had a classic sensitivity in ordering façades and openings, in composing forms with clear limits, and in designing monumental sets that border on the grandiose. Small wonder that his style was long thought to be anachronistic.

In fact, he saw beyond the formalism of his contemporaries. He could only conceive of architecture in "the third dimension, the trajectory: the perception of the dynamic building’. His built work is innovative but also timeless, no doubt because all his life he pursued ‘a single goal: impose by number and quality a form of architecture that is human and generous, create an example".

This exhibition and accompanying publication, which focussed mainly on Fernand Pouillon’s works in the Parisian region, present his residential schemes that, in their day and context, offered high quality living space and which remain remarkable examples of architectural production. In addition, the exhibition payed tribute to a paradoxical architect, a figure whose worth was always recognized by his peers, be it grudgingly or otherwise.