A visionary, Auguste Fournier the "father" of the cable car
(1902, Pers-Jussy - Le Cannet, 1979)
Auguste Fournier, born in Pers-Jussy, owes his celebrity to several technical creations including the Salève cable car, but also to his strong personality, his business sense and his entrepreneurial spirit.
In 1930, he had the idea of cable car at Salève and started the initial studies. On 2nd September 1931, he created the Salève Cable Car Company with nearly 300 shareholders, so as to finance the construction and daily running of the cable car.
President and founder of the company, Auguste Fournier is, above all, a man of action, more interested in the creation than in the management of the business. Thus in 1933, little time after the cable car started working he resold his shares to spend his time on other passionate and varied projects (the Veyrier-le-Lac cable car, the invention and fabrication of small bottles of gas for camping, the collaboration on the vaccine against foot and mouth disease ….)
An avant-garde architecture that we owe to Maurice Braillard
(1879, Auvernier, Neuchâtel – 1965, Geneva)
An established Geneva architect, urbanist and politician, Maurice Braillard was active in Switzerland and France between 1904 and 1957. He has left behind him a considerable work with multiple facets. The incredible integration of art and workmanship with the architecture, is a dominant preoccupation of his work during his first period of activity, marked by the creation of the Onex Town Hall and that of the City of Ugine (Savoie).
Progressively, Braillard diversified his studies. In the new programmes, like the Salève cable car, he developed a modern language with a strong evocative power. In the Geneva living areas - Maison Ronde, Cité Vieusseux, Squares de Montchoisy – he focalised his attention of the functional aspects and general practicality by valorising the intermediary areas leading to a narrow interweaving of private and public spheres. Lastly, before being elected to the head of the Geneva Public Work Department (from 1933 to 1936), Braillard turned his thoughts towards urbanism.
His work was honoured by the Town of Geneva who gave his name to a street in the Moillebeau quarter. The State of Geneva also marked its interest for the work of this architect by classifying all the buildings of the 30’s as a historical monument: la Maison Ronde.
For more information : http://www.braillard.ch/fondation/index.html
The modern technology of André Rebuffel
Parisian advice-engineer, specialised in aerial funiculars, André Rebuffel was in charge of the study and the creation of the electro-mechanical installations according to a system that he himself had invented.