Alexis Josic
(1921-)

Alexis Josic was born in Stari Becej, Yugoslavia in 1921. He studied painting at the National Fine Arts School and at the Josic Fine Art School (founded by his father Mladen Josic) in Belgrade. Subsequently he was educated as an architect at the Technical School in Belgrade (1940-48).

In the early 1950s the challenging intellectual and architectural climate of the French capital attracted Josic. In the period 1953-54 he worked in Paris for ATBAT, Atelier des bâtisseurs. This atelier was conceived as a research centre, where architects, engineers and technicians could work in an interdisciplinary fashion. In 1954, at the ATBAT office, Josic met Georges Candilis and Shadrach Woods who had returned from Morocco because of the turbulent political atmosphere. In 1954 the threesome left ATBAT to form an independent team, also including Guy Brunache and the engineers Henri Piot and Paul Dony. This became known as the Candilis-Josic-Woods partnership. Josic played an important role in the visualization of the ideas within the office. The sketches for concepts such as the habitat évolutif (1959) or for projects such as Cuvette Saint-Martin in Chad (1962) are by his hand. Josic was only peripherally involved with Team 10. He was rarely ‘officially’ present at meetings, but was well-informed about the debates through his two partners.

Josic was a professor of architecture at the École des Beaux Arts in Paris together with Georges Candilis between 1960 and 1964 (atelier Candilis-Josic). He also taught at the Faculty of Architecture of the Unité Pédagogique 5, Paris (1971-74) and was visiting professor in France and elsewhere.
After the partnership dissolved in 1969, Josic started a private architectural practice in Sèvres, near Paris, where he still lives.