André Schimmerling
(1912-)

Born in Timisoara in 1912 (part of Hungary at the time, added to Romania in 1920), André Schimmerling initially studied law. However, his career subsequently shifted towards architecture. Following a short stay in Romania in 1936, he returned to Paris, where he registered at the Ecole Spéciale d’Architecture, where his studies were interrupted by the Second World War (1937-40/1946-50). Those years of study were crucial, both because Schimmerling came into contact with a network of young architects and joined the Resistance, and because he collaborated with the journal l’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui.
In 1951 Schimmerling left for Israel to join his family in Tel Aviv, where he worked with Artur Glikson for two years. After meeting the Finnish poet Syyne Saätamoinen in Paris, whom he married in 1954, his centre of activity shifted to Finland. During his stay in Helsinki, Schimmerling worked with Aulis Blomstedt, through whom he joined the group CIAM-Finland. In 1957 he co-founded Le Carré Bleu, international journal of architecture, of which he was first secretary before being appointed director.

In 1959, Schimmerling took part in the Otterlo congress where he met with Team 10. He cultivated privileged relations with some of the group’s protagonists with whom he shared certain thematic preoccupations, opening the pages of Le Carré Bleu to them and quickly bringing them into the fold of the journal as contributors. Among them was Georges Candilis, whom he invited to join his agency when he decided to return to France in 1962. From that time on, Schimmerling took on certain of Candilis-Josic-Woods’ projects, including the study for the transformation of the Languedoc-Roussillon coastline, which led him to move to Montpellier with his family in 1963. At the same time, he continued his work with Le Carré Bleu. Having transferred the journal’s activities to Paris with the assent of the Finns, and having renewed its editorial circle, he tracked its development for over forty years (1958-2001).
Schimmerling lives in Paris.