After 1945, France's leading figures in modern architecture infiltrated the École des Beaux-Arts, but the system remained unchanged. They paid little attention to developing a theoretical or critical discourse, as their Italian counterparts were doing at the same time. While reconstruction projects dragged on, North Africa offered young professionals excluded from commissions in metropolitan France the opportunity to carry out a series of experimental programs, some of which were based on close observation of popular lifestyles.
In France at the start of the Cold War, architecture became a political issue, and the discussion of modern forms began both within the Communist Party, where socialist realism was by no means unanimous, and among certain Catholics, among whom the Dominicans of the magazine L'Art sacré were keen to promote innovative buildings.
Religious buildings provided the ideal terrain for Le Corbusier and André Bloc's attempts to achieve a "synthesis of the arts" - a slogan whose ambiguity was one of its main virtues. At the same time, another kind of synthesis is on the agenda, that achieved by architects and engineers in large-scale operations where structural prowess is required.
The projects of Édouard Albert and, above all, Jean Prouvé, took us in a different direction. For a time, Prouvé succeeded in reconciling his research with industrial production, designing and building lightweight constructions in tune with the technical inventions symbolized by the Citroën DS 19 and the Caravelle.
