Between 1918 and 1940, while the new approaches found a limited echo in some private commissions, public policies on a new scale opened up a wider field for them, in the context of fairly rapid urbanization. Several radical political leaders, both socialist and communist, saw modern architecture as both a means of responding adequately to their social agendas and a vehicle for a strategy of communication and persuasion.
The outskirts of major cities saw the emergence of garden cities, which, thanks to significant public funding - at least before the 1929 crisis and its sometimes belated consequences - were transformed into housing estates that broke away from their picturesque setting. From Villeurbanne to Drancy, these developments ensured the acclimatization of American skyscrapers, while the hypotheses put forward for their use in central Paris or La Défense proved unsuccessful.
New types of building were developed in contact with public buildings such as schools, town halls and markets in the cities, and sanatoria on the mountain slopes, crystallizing monumental aspirations that eluded academic stereotypes. Hygienic aspirations for sunlight and ventilation ran through both educational and sanitary programs, resulting in a more open, lighter architecture.
The rise of the automobile and aeronautics industries led to the production of a network of factories, garages and airfields, but above all stimulated the search for a light metal architecture that Eugène Beaudouin, Marcel Lods, Vladimir Bodiansky and Jean Prouvé were able to bring to a high degree of refinement.
