06 - Pierre et Marie Curie Campus

06 - Pierre et Marie Curie Campus - Edouard Albert - 1970

4 Place Jussieu, Paris

Edouard Albert (Paris, 1910-1968) graduated in 1937 from the École des Beaux-Arts de Paris. He began his career researching prefab techniques, synthetic materials, plastics, pre-stressed concrete, tubular structures, and then on three-dimensional urbanism. He was among the French architects who largely participated in the era of constructive experimentation.

The Campus, now called Jussieu Campus, was started by Albert in 1958. Albert applied his principle of tubular-frame architecture on a large scale. Its checkerboard plan is inspired by the famous “grid” of the Escorial Monastery near Madrid. Albert envisaged a quadrilateral on a plot of 275m by 333m, and is designed as a modular construction following an orthogonal grid with three morphologic elements: small linear block, of 18m by 33m, for teaching large linear block, of 18m by 45m, for research patios of 18m by 18m, for vertical circulation The project was never completed: 37.5 blocks were built instead of the 55 planned. Structurally, a total of 1,750 steel pilings support the buildings which surround 21 patios. The metal structure is left exposed on the facades; the filling is made of prefabricated panels. Gondola-shaped beams support the structure of the buildings. The Zamansky tower, which is located in one of the patios, was built in 1970 after Albert’s death, and was not executed according to the original plan.

The campus was supposed to be inaugurated in mid-March 1968, but the students of the university organized a series of large demonstrations and the Minister of Education preferred to cancel the ceremony. The project is abandoned in 1972, due to a lack of subsidies, hence the appearance of prefabricated buildings to compensate for the lack of space. The campus and the tower then closed in 1996 for absestos removal. The tower opened again in 2009, the rest of the campus in 2016, 20 years later.