Jean Dimitrijevic

Jean Dimitrijevic (1926–2010) was a French architect who worked with Guy Lagneau and Michel Weill in the Atelier LWD on many projects.

Career outline

Born in 1926, Dimitrijevic joined the French army during World War II (1939–1945). After the war, he began working as an apprentice architect in 1947, and became a junior partner at the Atelier LWD, an architectural firm created by Guy Lagneau and Michel Weill in 1952. He studied under Guy Lagneau at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, graduating as an architect planner in 1957. In 1959 he studied for a year at the Department of Architecture at MIT in the United States. During the thirty years of activity at LWD, the studio won many awards, serving private firms and the state with a complete process of design and implementation of architecture and overall urban planning. The studio was recognized as highly innovative.

Work in France

Dimitrijevic worked with Lagneau, Weill and Raymond Audigler on the design of the Museum of Modern Art at Le Havre, a box of glass, steel and aluminum with light, flexible spaces. The building was awarded the Prix Reynolds in 1962. It marked the start of a long collaboration with Jean Prouvé and Charlotte Perriand. He designed the Marinas of Cogolin in the Var department, a new departure for Dimitrijevic, and collaboration on the 120,000 square metres (1,300,000 sq ft) Quatre-Temps shopping center in La Défense, a business district of Paris, which opened in 1981.