By the scope of his work and commitments, Jean-Louis Cohen has had a profound impact on the history of architecture and urban planning, not only in France but throughout the world. As a historian of architectural modernity, he has endeavored to study main figures, as well as more anonymous developments, without neglecting darker moments. Contributing to the rise of world history, he emphasized the international circulations that have fueled the globalization of architecture. His research fields have ranged from Europe and North America to colonial Morocco and the USSR, with a constant concern for analyzing the connections between these different contexts. Beyond these fundamental works, Jean-Louis Cohen has also forged an approach to history and concepts, as that of “interurbanity”, seeking to characterize the complex transfers he was tracking between the world’s cities. A prolific author and researcher, he has never ceased teaching and renewing the forms of transmission, whether through major exhibitions organized on different continents, the prefiguration of the Cité de l’Architecture in Paris, or the series of public lectures given as guest professor at the Collège de France.
Following the sudden death of Jean-Louis Cohen in 2023, we would like to take a look back at the legacies he passed on to us, and consider the perspectives he helped to open up for architectural history. Rather than organizing a tribute, our aim is to reflect collectively on the intellectual projects to which he has contributed, and sometimes inspired, leaving therefore his mark on several generations of researchers. What is the legacy of this historian’s thought and action that inspires us today? How do we seize upon it to develop new avenues of research? And how can we also depart from it? These questions are intended to be retrospective, but also to look to the present and future of architectural history.
The Rencontres Jean-Louis Cohen takes the form of a series of international seminars held in Paris. Each of them is devoted to a theme that sheds light on an aspect of the legacies and perspectives opened up by his work. Proposals for papers will fall within each of the defined themes. They may focus on a particular aspect of Jean-Louis Cohen’s production (books, exhibitions, teaching, etc.), on more methodological issues (concepts, approaches, sources, etc.) or on the work of researchers discussed in relation to his contributions. The Rencontres are open not only to people who have interacted with him, but also and above all to researchers with whom his work echoes.
This call for papers concerns the first two Rencontres. Following events will be the subject of subsequent calls.
1st Rencontre. Theme: Mediation and disseminating
Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine, 12 juin 2025
Coordinators: Guillemette Morel-Journel et David Peyceré
For Jean-Louis Cohen, architecture is a cause of public interest, and research should be aimed not only at academics and students, but also at a wider public. His role in institutions such as the Canadian Centre for Architecture, and above all his involvement in the prefiguration and creation of the Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine in Paris, bear witness to this. This commitment also found significant recognition in his public lectures at the Collège de France from 2013 to 2021.
Alongside the many works that were intended for the scientific sphere, numerous publications of his own are to be found in mass-market publishing houses such as Taschen, Phaidon or Flammarion, as well as exhibitions in non-specialized venues such as the Centre Pompidou (1979, 1987), the Museum of Modern Art in New York (2013) or the Power Station in Shanghai (2023). However, publishing books for the wider public is sometimes difficult today, in particular for funding reasons. The exhibition exercise also raises a number of questions: how to stage archival documents? How to represent buildings in their absence (drawings, models, immersion techniques, digital reconstructions, etc.)? And, more generally, how can historical research be combined with lectures, radio and television broadcasts, exhibitions and books to bring the discipline of architecture to a wider public? Finally, the range of Jean-Louis Cohen’s international networks also testifies to his desire to present his result on every continent, in line with his commitment to a global history. From an ecological and ethical point of view, to what extent would be such an ambition still tenable today? In addition to answering these questions about the mediation and dissemination of architectural history, this seminar will be an opportunity to look back on the adventure of the creation of the Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine.
2nd Rencontre. Theme: Interurbanity
ENSA Paris-Belleville, 2 octobre 2025
Coordinator: Corinne Jaquand
Jean-Louis Cohen has made a significant contribution to the history of urban planning in the 20th century from a transnational perspective. Close to Anglo-Saxon Planning History and other Italian and German academic traditions, his work has played a key role in opening up a field of research between the social history of planning and the history of urban forms. This Rencontre proposes to focus to one of the intellectual projects he left unfinished, around the notion of “interurbanity”. Starting from an intuitive or intentional circulation of urban models and their rhetorical schemes, this notion borrows from intertextual analysis in literature, shifting it towards the corpus of concrete cities and territories, theories and iconic buildings, and spatial figures of planning. In the continuity of comparatism and reception theory, “interurbanity” is a convenient posture for considering cultural palimpsests and the acceleration of transfers in the context of contemporary multipolarity. This specific call is open to a variety of topics: cities that shaped the global imagination; colonial areas that were receptacles of cross-fertilizing influences; the choice of objects and modes of writing urban history today; the inflection of notions and schemas by the passage from one language to another.
Subsequent themes: Teaching and transmission, The history of architecture and its sources, Paris, Architecture and politics.
Schedule / Required components
Proposals, in French or English, should include a title, an abstract (3000 signs), five keywords and a biography (500 signs). It should be specified the thematic Rencontre (and date) of the proposal and its format (20-minute paper, 10-15 minutes testimonial, poster).
The proposals should be sent in PDF until Monday February 17th, 2025 (included), to the following address: rencontresJLC@gmail.com
Organization committee
Catherine Blain, IPRAUS, ENSA Paris-Belleville
Paul Bouet, OCS, ENSA Paris-Est
Corinne Jaquand, IPRAUS, ENSA Paris-Belleville
Catherine Maumi, AHTTEP, ENSA Paris-La Villette
Guillemette Morel Journel, ACS, ENSA Paris-Malaquais
David Peyceré, Centre d’archives d’architecture contemporaine, Cité de l’architecture et du
patrimoine
Scientific Committee
Barry Bergdoll, Columbia University
Maristella Casciato, Getty Research Institute
Vanessa Grossman, University of Pennsylvania
Carola Hein, TU Delft
Caroline Maniaque, ENSA Normandie
Clément Orillard, École d’urbanisme de Paris
Ana Tostões, Universidade Técnica de Lisboa, Docomomo International