Louis-Marie Cordonnier

Louis-Marie Cordonnier was a member of the Inter-ministerial Reconstitution Committee (1916) and then President of the Société Centrale des Architectes (1918-1922).
He quickly become involved in the organisation of France’s rebuilding after the Great War. In the field, he defended the interests of injured parties, monitored the involvement of architects, contractors, and local artisans and recommended they gather into reconstruction cooperatives. The agency he directed with his son Louis-Stanislas (1884-1960) in Lille adapted modern industrial procedures to work sites which sanctioned the use of concrete and local brick. Over thirty projects including the city centres of Armentières, Bailleul, Merville, and Laventie, the Anzin and the Lens mining company headquarters, the city of Comines belfry and city hall, the churches of Bethune, Fauquissart, Fleurbaix, Waziers, and the necropolis of Notre-Dame-de-Lorette are testimony to their attachment to northern regionalism and medieval eclecticism. Notions of time and space were essential: for opponents to the German Bauhaus movement and the formal purism of the Modern Movement, architecture must adapt to contemporary techniques, means, and uses without forgetting regional and French artistic roots.