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Agache, Donat-Alfred
(b Tours, 1875; d 1934). French architect, urban planner and writer. He graduated in 1905 from the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris, where he was a student in the atelier of Victor Laloux. In 1902 he came into contact with the Musée Social, a non-profit organization of bourgeois reformers, which sent him to visit the Louisiana Purchase International Exposition (1904) in St Louis, MO. Like a number of French architects of his generation such as Léon Jaussely and Marcel Auburtin (1872–1926), with whom he founded the Société Française des Architectes Urbanistes in 1913, he established a practice focused on urban design, achieving an international reputation in this field. Agache claimed to have coined the word ‘urbanisme’ and in 1914 he organized the first courses ever taught on the subject in France at the Collège Libre des Sciences Sociales et Economiques in Paris. His professional work included a prizewinning entry (1912; unexecuted) to the international competition for the design of Canberra, the new capital city of Australia, and master plans for Dunkerque (1912), Creil (1924) and Poitiers (1928). In 1927 he was invited to prepare a master-plan for Rio de Janeiro, then the capital city of Brazil. His proposals were based on traffic analysis; they stressed comprehensive zoning, with the establishment of a strong hierarchy between economic sectors and the creation of neighbourhood units separated by open space, as well as an architectural gradation from high-rise office buildings to small suburban houses. The plan was completed and published in 1930, but a change in government prevented its implementation. Agache produced several books on urban planning, including La Remodélation d’une capitale (1932), a comprehensive city planning manual based on his plan for Rio. His architectural work was limited but it is notable that in his Maison de Tous, a model communal house built in the precincts of the Village Français at the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes (1925), Paris, this former advocate of a picturesque reconstruction of rural architecture was influenced by Tony Garnier’s modernist architectural style.
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