Laurent Chappis, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death
TweetLaurent Chappis
French architect
Date of Birth: 
Place of Birth: Aix-les-Bains, Auvergne-RhĂ´ne-Alpes, France
About Laurent Chappis
- Laurent Chappis (8 May 1915 – 28 December 2013) was an architect and town planner, born in Aix-les-Bains, France.
- He created the French ski resort of Courchevel located in the Trois Vallées and in doing so practically wrote the rule book on how to design a ski resort.
- Chappis was a keen ski tourer exploring the mountains around Grenoble in the 1930s before joining the army and serving in the early stages of World War II.
- A decorated war hero he was captured in an attack on a German position in the final days before the French surrender and served five years in a PoW camp in Austria. He completed his doctorate in captivity, the subject was the development of a ski resort in the Trois Vallées area.
- His ideas were often controversial, especially with developers more concerned with profits than aesthetics.
- This led him to be nicknamed the Anarchitecte.
- In the 1960s he was appointed as a United Nations expert on mountain development.
- A nomination that came not from his native France but from Italy.
- Chappis is also credited along with the architect Denis Pradelle with creating a modern, functional style of mountain architecture which rejected both traditional Savoie styles and the Tyrolean chalet style of architecture.
Read more at Wikipedia