Fernand Pouillon

Ferdinand Pouillon (14 May 1912 – 24 July 1986) was a French architect, urban planner, building contractor and writer.

He produced modern architecture focussing on cultural, educational and residential projects, but also worked on two restoration projects. He built mostly in the Aix-en-Provence, Marseille and Paris (in France), Alger (in Algeria) and Tehran (in Iran). Although he had already built extensively before the Second World War, he is best known for his designs of, often low-cost, housing complexes in the 1950s and 1960s, including the La Tourette complex in Marseille, built 1948–1953, the new town Diar el Mahçoul in Algeria and for hotel designs in Alger between 1964–1984. He also worked on reconstruction of the war-damaged Old Port of Marseille together with Auguste Perret and others.

In 1961, he was jailed for his role as a building contractor on a housing project in Paris, escaped from jail, was eventually acquitted for the original crime, but jailed again for escaping. While in jail he wrote the Les Pierres Sauvages (The Stones of the Abbey), a book about the construction of Le Thoronet Abbey, and in subsequent years edited and wrote more books. He was finally released from jail in 1964 and moved to Algeria, only to return to France in 1972, after being pardoned by the French President Georges Pompidou.

He spent the last years of his life at Château de Belcastel, a mediaeval castle in the Aveyron department, which he restored together with Algerian craftsman.