The career of engineer Vladimir Bodiansky

Abstract

Through an examination of the career of Russian-born engineer Vladimir Bodiansky (1894–1966), this paper considers the gradual change in the status of engineers in France in the 1930s and after World War II, focusing on the issue of the intellectual property rights of company-employed engineers. It recounts the career of this important, though relatively unknown, figure in French architectural and engineering history who began his career as a civil engineer, turning to aeronautical engineering during the 1920s and to the building industry in the 1930s. His early passion for aviation explains, in part, both his professional path and his architectural accomplishments. However, it was really his encounter with architects Marcel Lods and Le Corbusier that marked a turning point in the career of this engineer whose supreme quest, following his first architectural construction projects in collaboration with the builder Eugène Mopin, was industrialisation of the construction industry. He is most widely recognised for his work as technical director of Atelier de Bâtisseurs, the technical design office he founded with Le Corbusier in 1945.