Rey, A.Augustin, Pidoux, Justin, & Barde, Charles

La science des plans de villes. Ses applications à la construction, à l’extension, à l’hygiène et à la beauté des villes orientation solaire des habitations.

Lausanne, Payot & Cie (and Paris, Dunod) nd (but 1928).

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A substantial French-language text book on town planning, co-authored by Rey, an architect from Paris, Barde, an architect from Geneva, Switzerland, and Justin Pidoux, honorary astronomer at Geneva Observatory. It provides a clear overview of the principles behind, and purposes of, town planning, and its existence is a corrective to the view that in the early twentieth century the redevelopment of city centres and the construction of new garden suburbs were principally a concern for planners in Britain and Germany (although plans of existing garden suburbs and workers’ settlements in Britain and Germany are used by the authors to illustrate their narrative). What gives the volume a distinct originality is its acceptance that sunlight is the “suprême facteur de la vie” and that proper thought should be given to the proper orientation of planned communities, based on astronomical data. In this respect, the volume was very much ahead of its time, and there is a sad note at the end of the foreword that Justin Pidoux, the co-author responsible for these parts of the text, had died just before publication.