Ernest Hébrard
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Ernest Hébrard (1875 – 1933) was a French architect, archaeologist and urban planner. He is mostly renowned for his plan to reform the city of Thessaloniki in Greece.
After the Great Thessaloniki Fire of 1917, the majority of Thessaloniki was largely destroyed. The Greek Prime Minister Eleftherios Venizelos forbade the reconstruction of the city center until a full modern city plan was approved. This was accomplished by the "Hébrard plan", the plan Hébrard had conceived and developed with the aid of the Greek architects Aristotelis Zachos and Konstantinos Kitsikis.
The plan swept away the Oriental features of Thessaloniki, preserving its Byzantine heritage, and transformed it into a European style city.
Hébrard was also involved in several other projects, such as the upgrading of Casablanca and Diocletian's palace at Split, and planning for several towns in French Indochina, where he became head of the Indochina Architecture and Town Planning Service in 1923. However, his idea was to incorporate into French architecture elements of indigenous design from the colonial territories of Việt Nam, Cambodia and Laos. In 1931 he returned to Paris where he died two years later.
