The Knight's Move: Jean-Louis Cohen

Thursday 23 January 2014, 20:00 hrs
Location: Hogewal 1-9, The Hague
Entrance fee: € 5,-
Language: English
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Read more about Jean-Louis Cohen on The Pop-Up City (our media partner for The Knight's Move)

French architecture critic Jean-Louis Cohen, who organized the comprehensive exhibition Le Corbusier: An Antlas of Modern Landscapes (2013) at MoMA in New York, has been called an academic globe-trotter, a multi-faceted essayist, a frequent destroyer of cherished illusions and clichés about architecture, a writer and worker of enormous stamina, a teacher whose history lessons could reach a duration of eight hours in a single day, with hundreds of slides. Come prepared!!!

Jean-Louis Cohen studied architecture at the École Spéciale d'Architecture and at the Unité Pédagogique n° 6 in Paris, and received a Ph.D. in history at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in 1985. After having directed the Architectural Research Program at the French Ministry of Housing, he held a research professorship from 1983 to 1996 at the School of Architecture Paris-Villemin. From 1996 to 2004, he held a chair in town-planning history at the Institut Français d'Urbanisme, University of Paris. In 1993, he was appointed the Sheldon H. Solow Chair for the History of Architecture at New York University's Institute of Fine Arts.

From 1997 to 2003, the French Minister of Culture appointed him to create the Cité de l'architecture, a museum, research and exhibition center opened in 2007 in the Paris Palais de Chaillot. During this period, he directed the Institut Français d'Architecture and the Musée des Monuments Français, the two main components of the Cité.

Mr. Cohen's research activity has focused mainly on 20th-century architecture and urban planning. In particular, he has studied German and Soviet architectural cultures, colonial situations in North Africa, architecture during World War II, and extensively interpreted Le Corbusier's work and Paris planning history.

His recent publications include: The Future of Architecture. Since 1889 (London: Phaidon, 2012), Architecture in Uniform (Paris: Hazan, 2011), Mies van der Rohe (Paris: Hazan, 2007); Above Paris, the Aerial Survey of Roger Henrard (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2006); Liquid Stone, New Architecture in Concrete, ed. with G. Martin Moeller, Jr. (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2006); and Le Corbusier, la planète comme chantier (Paris: Textuel, 2005).

He has been a curator for numerous exhibitions including The Lost Vanguard: Soviet Modernist Architecture 1922-32 at the MoMA in New York (2007); Scenes of the World to Come and Architecture in Uniform at the Canadian Center for Architecture (1995 and 2011); and Paris-Moscou (1979) and the centennial show L'aventure Le Corbusier (1987), both at the Centre Pompidou in Paris.

The Knight's Move
Survey lectures season 2013-2014
The Knight's Move is a series of lectures by eminent international speakers who stand out by their unusual, enlightening and inspirational visions concerning the city, urbanity, the public domain, and community. Just as the knight moves in an atypical and unusual way across the chessboard, Stroom Den Haag likewise wants to cut across all disciplines and thus stimulate rethinking the city.

Media partner of The Knight's Move 2013-2014 is The Pop-Up City.

The Knight's Move lectures are made possible in part by the Creative Industries Fund NL and the Haagse Bluf Fonds.

Archive The Knight's Move lectures 2009-present

Jean-Louis Cohen
Le Corbusier (Charles-Édouard Jeanneret) with Pierre Jeanneret. Model of the Villa Savoye, Poissy. 1928-31
photo: The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Purchase. © 2012 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris / FLC
Karl Valentin as 'Schwerer Reiter'
photo: © Schloss Wahn (design: Thonik, Amsterdam)
The Pop-Up City: Media partner The Knight's Move