Alberto Sartoris was born on the 1st of February 1901 in Turin to a wood sculptor and an actress. His family moved to Geneva where Alberto attended school. In 1916, he was admitted to the École des Beaux-Arts, where he took architecture courses taught by geometry professor and architect Henri Gallay, to whom Sartoris would give life-long recognition as a master. He entered into contact with the international avant-gardes, Italian futurism and, most notably, with poet F. T. Marinetti during the Exposition internationale d’art moderne in Geneva in 1920-1921. In 1922 he settled in Turin, where he entered the studio of Annibale Rigotti, another of his masters. He pursued self-training, published articles on rational architecture, organised and participated in various exhibitions – notably the Artistes contemporains italiens show at Geneva’s Musée Rath in 1927. From the 25th to the 29th of June 1928, he participated in the first International Congress of Modern Architecture (CIAM) held at the Château de La Sarraz and organised by Le Corbusier, Sigfried Giedion and Hélène de Mandrot. It was there, in just a few days’ time, that he was able to meet the key figures of modern architecture, including Le Corbusier, Pierre Chareau, André Lurçat, Pierre Jeanneret and Gerrit Rietveld. He joined many professional unions, groups and committees, and was an active member of diverse avant-garde movements on the international scene: CIRPAC, UAM, Cercle et Carré, Abstraction-création, etc. He returned to Switzerland at the beginning of the 1930s to settle in the Château de Glérolles at Rivaz, where he designed the Notre-Dame du Phare cathedral (Fribourg) and a house for Doctor Breuleux (Cully). He also lived in the Grand-Rue at Lutry and finally established himself at Cossonay. In 1932, he built the chapel of Notre-Dame du Bon Conseil at Lourtier in the Val de Bagnes (Valais). It was the first modern alpine church. In addition to his architectural practice, Sartoris was intensely active in the promotion of the modern movement between 1920 and 1950. In 1935, he flew off to South America for a series of lectures. A loyal defender of the architecture of Le Corbusier, Sartoris gave him a privileged place in his writings. In Milan from 1932 to 1957, he published a series of visual anthologies that are legendary today: Gli elementi dell'architettura funzionale (three progressively expanded editions, 1932-1941) followed by the Encyclopédie de l'architecture nouvelle (three volumes, 1948-1957). In 1945, he was a charter member of the Athenaeum school of architecture in Lausanne. From 1955 to 1959, he taught in Sion (Valais) at the École cantonale des beaux-arts (where Oskar Kokoschka also taught). During the 1960s, Sartoris designed several buildings that were built on the shores of Lake Geneva: the Keller garage at Saint-Prex, the Villa Huber at Saint-Sulpice, the Motel des Blonnaisses at Cully, as well as apartment buildings at Lutry, La Tour-de-Peilz and Montreux. In 1976, he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL), where he taught in the department of architecture. In 1982, he travelled to the United States for some lectures and an exhibition in New York and Boston. His last works (in collaboration with two of his former students, Emmanuel Cattani and Pierre Pastellas) include the Lesieur factory in Dunkerque (1983-1984) and the Labeyrie factory in Biarritz (1986-1987). Alberto Sartoris died on March 8, 1998 at Pompaples (Vaud) at age 97.
