Pierre Vago

Together with his compatriot Jack Neel, Hungarian-born French architect Pierre Vago received an Honorable Mention for his work Centre Social de la Jeunesse et des Sports de la Commune de Levallois at the 1948 London Olympics in the Art Competitions in the category Architecture, Designs For Town Planning. Vago was a great communicator, a member of the Academy of Arts in Berlin, co-founder and president of the International Union of Architects (UIA), for several years editor of the magazine L’Architecture d’aujourd’hui (1930-75). He also initiated international architect academies, which trained young architects.

Among his most famous works were Berlin’s Hansaviertel (Hansa district), the University Library in Bonn (in collaboration with Fritz Bornemann) and the underground Basilica in Lourdes. Vago studied at the École des Beaux Arts in Paris but left early as he felt it wasn’t up to date. He then moved to the École Speciale d’Architecture, becoming acquainted with Auguste Perret and with modern steel construction and structures and the New Objectivity.

After the German invasion of France in 1940, Vago worked as an architect in Marseille, and built a larger home near Cassis and a chemical factory in Sorgue. As collaboration with the Nazis was not any option, he joined the Résistance. From 1943 he built up a communications network to assist the French government in exile, providing information on London troop strength, weapons, locations and maps of the Italian troops in the Italian occupation zone at the coast between Monte Carlo and Hyères. On 9 May 1943, he was arrested by the Germans in Marseille and imprisoned, but was released soon as they could not prove anything against him. After the war, he was considered a pioneer of the German-French friendship and advocated for contacts of architects from East and West Germany on a semi-official level.