François Spoerry

François Henry Spoerry (28 December 1912 – 11 January 1999) was a French architect, developer, and urban planner who created the seaside town of Port Grimaud. He was an Officier of the Légion d'honneur and an Officier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.

Early years He was born in Mulhouse to a large, industrious family that had moved from Switzerland to Mulhouse in 1848 to start up a textile business. The family had a holiday home at Partigon. His parents were Henry Spoerry (1879–1966) and Jeanne Schlumberger. in 1930. He became an assistant to Jacques Couëlle during the period of 1932 through 1934. He graduated from Marseille's École des Beaux-Arts in 1943 .

During World War II, he used an architectural research project in Aix-en-Provence as a cover for working with the French Resistance.

After the war ended, he opened his first architectural firm in Mulhouse where he associated with a significant number of reconstruction projects. In Mulhouse, he was the planner of the new town centre. He also built in Mulhouse the Tour of Europe, the largest structure in contemporary France whose top floor was a revolving restaurant. He also built several residential structures, including Wilson Tower (highest building in the city after the Tour of Europe), the Residence Clemenceau. Residence Pierrefontaine, and others. What is most significance about the work of Spoerry is that he broke with the first principles of Planning CIAM while rediscovering the principles of a dense urbanism. He built and developed several mixed-use, neo-traditional, developments in Europe and North America.

At the end of the 1980s, he was known as a member of Amiic (World Real Estate Investment Organization, Geneva) and was a lecturer, with Jean-Pierre Thiollet and other important people, of some international meetings of this organization (which was dissolved in 1997).

He is associated with the European Urban Renaissance movement. He was an advocate of "vernacular architecture". Spoerry and his wife had two sons, Yves and Bernard.

Spoerry was an avid sailor, owning the schooner Amphitrite between 1966 and 1969. He died at his home in Port Grimaud