Jacques Alphée Lagisquet, born in Nice (Alpes-Maritimes), son of François Charles Lagisquet (1864-1936), a soldier and later an architect in Indochina, promoted to Officer of the Academy in 1910, and Léonie Blanche Bouderghem (1870-1942).
He was a student of Jean Bréasson, Gustave Umbdenstock, and Emmanuel Pontremoli. He was admitted to the second class on July 12, 1922, and to the first class on December 23, 1925, and graduated on November 14, 1928 (140th promotion, with a project for a Mediterranean villa).
He left France in 1929 to work as assistant architect of public works in the civil buildings service in Annam (architect in Hanoi, Indochina [Vietnam] between 1932 and 1942). He was seconded to the French School of the Far East in October 1935, where he collaborated on the arrangement of the Cham Museum in Tourane and was appointed Inspector of the Archaeological Service and Curator of the Angkor group at the beginning of 1936. He returned to his original post, assigned to Huế to finalize the plans for the Thanh-Hoa Museum.
He was appointed a permanent member of the EFEO (École française d’Extrême-Orient) in 1942, but continued to work in Dalat on public works projects until March 1945 (during the Japanese occupation). He worked in Saigon, overseeing the Conservation of Historical Monuments in Indochina, in the Cochinchina sector, until the end of 1945. He remained in Dalat until July 1946. In 1947, he was appointed Curator of the Albert Sarraut Museum, and later interim Secretary-General of the Buddhist Institute in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. He left the EFEO in June 1948 to work in Dalat as a public works advisor.
Stricken by poliomyelitis, he had to return to France. He was declared unfit for overseas service by the Higher Health Council in 1950. He lived in Nice, Alpes-Maritimes between 1967 and 1970. He worked on the Dominican Parish Church, avenue Hung Vuong in Hanoi, in 1943.
He was a member of the Association of Students and Alumni of the École Nationale and École Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, also known as Grande Masse de l’École des Beaux-Arts (in 1929). He was married in Hanoi to Jeanne Eva Françoise Hilaire (deceased), and later, in Hanoi on April 4, 1942, to Alice Juliane Le Saout; they divorced on June 7, 1949. He died in Nice on July 13, 1970.
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