Un établissement d’enseignement professionnel de style Art déco : le lycée Paul-Louis Cyfflé de Nancy

Built in Nancy (Meurthe-et-Moselle French department) between 1925 and 1934 by the architect Jean-Frédéric Wielhorski (1874-1942), the current lycée Paul-Louis Cyfflé originally housed an upper primary school for boys before it became, much later on, a vocational high school that prepared students for occupations in the graphic industry. Established in 1833 by the Guizot Law, the upper primary schools, dedicated to general and vocational education, did not flourished until the 1880’s within the context of the votes on the Ferry Laws. The municipality of Nancy, in a movement of urban renewal, decided in the aftermath of the First World War to build a new school specialised in technical education on the convent of the Visitation site located in a poor neighbourhood at the doorstep of the city centre. At the time, it was a period of Art Deco-style major construction projects in Nancy, many of the private sponsors chose that new style. Influenced by the designs that came from the Exposition des arts décoratifs, “the decorative arts Exhibition” held in Paris in 1925, the future city architect Jean-Frédéric Wielhorski, keen on collages and mixtures of styles peculiar to the eclectic spirit, set up a project that claimed to be ambitious in its scale and modern in its décor. The hybrid architecture, with its tempered modernity consistent with the post-war conservatism of a provincial municipality, has made the lycée Paul-Louis Cyfflé a singular building in the architectural production of the inter-war period in Nancy, as well as one of the rare examples of Art Deco school architecture in the Grand-Est region, for whose quality it received the “Outstanding contemporary architecture” label in 2015.