Jacques Carlu

Who was Jacques Carlu?

Jacques Carlu was a French architect and designer, working mostly in Art Deco style, active in France, Canada, and in the United States.

Through the 1910s Carlu studied on site with British city planner Thomas Hayton Mawson, Pittsburgh architects Palmer and Hornbostel, and in the Paris studios of Victor Laloux. After winning the Prix de Rome in 1919, Carlu takes a number of academic positions in quick succession: director of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts at Fontainebleau, professor of architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1924 to 1934, and a position with the Beaux Arts Institute of Design in New York. With intensive transatlantic travel, Carlu becomes a sort of ambassador of Streamline Moderne style.

His most famous building is likely the Palais de Chaillot, Trocadéro, near the Eiffel Tower, which was designed for the Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne. The building's long wings now serve as museum space, and it features sculptural groups on the attic by Raymond Delamarre, Carlo Sarrabezolles and Alfred Bottiau.

His other buildings include the 1957 NATO HQ in Paris, now Université Paris-Dauphine.