Marcel Lods was born in Paris. He became a member of the International Congresses of Modern Architecture (CIAM) in 1933 and in 1934 of the Union of Modern Artists (UAM). He was a pioneer in the field of prefabrication.

Marcel Lods was a defender of the integral industrialization of the building, he imposed his ideas in a radical study for the reconstruction of Mainz. The idea was built in a neighborhood unit of thousand units in Sotteville-les-Rouen with collaboration of Marc Alexandre. In the 1960s he founded the GEAI (Groupement d'Etudes for Industrialized Architecture) with Henri Beauclair and Paul Depondt and realized a prototype of a fully-engineered building.

From 1948 he taught at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris (from which he resigned in 1964) and from 1957 onwards at the Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussees. He became a member of the Academy of Architecture in 1971. He published the book Le Metier d'architecte (1976).