(b Marseille, 27 March 1906; d 1988). French architect, active in Morocco and Tunisia. He grew up in Morocco and then trained at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris (1928–33), working in the studio of Emmanuel Pontrémoli. From an early stage he was interested in regional styles, and he claimed to have learnt most about architecture from studying the convents on Mt Athos, Greece, which he visited in 1930. He returned to Morocco in 1933, and over the next decade he designed many religious and academic buildings, notably the Saffarin madrasa (c. 1935), Fez, an Islamic college, and the university (1935) at Qarawiyyin, Fez; in this work he was deeply influenced by the style and construction methods of traditional Islamic architecture of the region. His synthesis of European modernism and North African tradition is particularly evident in his Tunisian work. He was invited by Bernard Zehrfuss to join the team working on the reconstruction of Tunisia in 1943. As Chief Architect in the Studies and Works Division, he was responsible for several important projects, including a reception centre for the war-wounded (1944) in Tunis, an administration building (c. 1945) at Bizerte Zarzouna and the Lycée (1949–55) at Carthage. In these, as in his private houses like the Ces House (1945; with Paul Herbe and Michel Patout), Hammamet, and the Patout House (1950), Sidi Bou Said, he found a freedom to depart from the typological constraints of his Moroccan work by adapting traditional forms to modern buildings. After a brief period in the Lebanon, he returned to Tunisia in 1960. Besides much else, he built the Reqqada Palace (1965; now the Musée d’Art Islamique), near Kairouan, for the Tunisian president Habib Bourgiba.