Jean-Louis Cohen

Jean-Louis Cohen, an architect and historian, was born in Paris in 1949. His research has focused on architecture and urban planning in twentieth-century France, Germany, Italy, Russia and the United States; patterns of internationalization and regional cultures; the modernization of urban form in Paris; and city planning in colonial Algeria and Morocco. Between 1998 and 2003, he led the Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine project in Paris’ Palais de Chaillot, serving as director of the French Institute of Architecture (IFA) and the Museum of French Monuments.
 
Since 1994, he has held the Sheldon H. Solow Chair in the History of Architecture at New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts. He has curated numerous exhibitions for the Pompidou Centre, the Pavillon de l’Arsenal, the Canadian Centre for Architecture, the French Institute of Architecture, and the Museum of Modern Art; and is the author of Le Corbusier and the Mystique of the USSR (1992), Scenes of the World to Come (1995), Casablanca: Colonial Myths and Architectural Ventures (1998, with Monique Eleb), and New York (2008).

[Author photo by Gitty Darugar]