(b Paris, 4 June 1882; d Paris, 9 Jan 1946). French architect and designer. He studied at the Atelier Paulin of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris, where he obtained his diploma in 1911. His early works included several houses for wealthy clients in Paris and a pavilion for the magazine Art et décoration at the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes (1925), Paris, that revealed a taste for elegant restraint, placing him among the significant proponents of the Art Deco style in France. This was also expressed in his interior designs for the ocean liners Ile de France (1929 and 1932–3) and Normandie (1934–5). He is best remembered, however, for his work for the French railways. Under the enlightened sponsorship of Raoul Dautry, then director of French state railways, Pacon designed some low-cost housing for railway workers as well as railway carriages and locomotives. He also designed passenger terminals, for example the Gare du Maine (1928–9; destr.; see Monnier, figs 79 and 80), Paris; and stations at Le Havre (1929–32; tower destr.) and Chartres (1933–4). In these buildings he departed from the eclecticism still prevalent in railway-station design, promoting instead the rational use of reinforced concrete and new building techniques with stripped classical designs that were remarkable for their clarity in both plan and elevation.