Conference : The unusual destiny of an ordinary naval engineer: Pierre Toufaire

Pierre Toufaire, a naval engineer and great utopian who, from Rochefort, put aesthetics at the service of a humanist conception of society. He was a pioneering town planner who, informed by the publications of the architect Blondel, conceived global and modern urban and industrial developments that the ministers entrusted to him. In Rochefort in 1775, he put paid to engineer Augias's lack of energy by proposing a complete reorganisation of the Arsenal, a project that would take 20 years to complete. But every year, with the stubbornness of a visionary, he set to work again. He would thus enable the Arsenal to be organised in a way that was more in line with the expectations of the Navy. The apotheosis would conclude with, as Martine Acerra puts it, ‘the great affair’ of the new naval hospital and the construction of the Saint Charles fountain, a seminal act in the city's mastery of water. Eager for social recognition, he never ceased to build a legend that would end up drowned in the great revolutionary utopia that swept him to the shores of Port la Montagne.

Before 8 June

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