Sébastien Marot

Born in 1961, educated as a philosopher, Sébastien Marot was general delegate to the Société Française des Architectes from 1986 to 2002 where he founded and directed the Tribune d’histoire et d’actualité de l’architecture [« Tribune on Architectural History and News »], and then the journal Le Visiteur [« The Visitor »]. His research and publications have focused on the genealogy of architectural theories and contemporary practices, on urban design, on landscape architecture, and, most particularly, on the staging of the historical density of situations constructed by different disciplines.

Welcomed as a researcher at the Centre Canadien d’Architecture de Montréal from 2004-2005, in 2008, Sébastien Marot defended his thesis at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales [School of Higher Studies in Social Sciences] with his history thesis Palimpsestuous Ithaca portrayed as a « relative manifesto on suburbanism », and which he is currently in the process of having published. His essays and research on architecture and landscape design led the Academie d’architecture to give him the medal for architectural analysis in 2004 and then the « Prize for Research and Doctoral Thesis in Architecture » in 2010.

In 2008, Sébastien Marot was a member of the scientific council for the consultation on the Greater Paris project and for the RFP Ignis Mutat Res : L’architecture, la ville et les paysages au prisme de l’énergie [« Ignis Mutat Res : Architecture, the City, and Landscapes through the Prism of Energy »] begun in 2011 by the Ministry of Culture, the Ministry of the Ecology, and the International Workshop on the Greater Paris project. In the framework of Venice’s Architecture Biennial in 2014, he collaborated on the exhibition headed by Rem Koolhaas/AMO on the « Elements of Architecture » where Marot worked on the section on The Fireplace (cf. Sébastien Marot, Rem Koolhaas, Harvard GSD, Fireplace, Marsilio 2014).

Besides his work publishing and critiquing, Sébastien Marot has been invited to teach in numerous architecture or landscape design schools in Europe and the United States: IAUG (Geneva), ENSP (Versailles), AA School (London), GSD Harvard (Boston), Upenn (Philadelphia), Cornell (Ithaca), Université de Montréal, ETHZ (Zurich) etc. Today he is assistant professor at the School of Architecture, Cities, and Regions -East Paris [ l’École d’architecture de la ville & des territoires Paris-Est ], school which he helped found and where he teaches, as at Harvard and at EPFL, the history of the environment and environmental issues linked to architecture and landscape.

Author of many books, of which, L’Art de la mémoire, le territoire et l’architecture [« The Art of Memory, Region, and Architecture »] (éditions La Villette, 2010), Sébastien Marot co-directs, with Éric Alonzo, the journal published by the School of Architecture, Cities, and Regions -East Paris, Marnes : documents d’architecture [Marne, Architectural Document ] (Éditions de La Villette), which offers, among other things, to translate and present key writings which have not yet been published in French.

In October 2017, Sébastien Marot received his accreditation at the School to direct research on Architecture et histoire de l’environnement : de l’art de la mémoire à l’art d’espérer [« Architecture and the History of the Environment: from the Art of Memory to the Art of Hope].

In 2019, he curated the exhibition presented within the framework of the Triennial of Lisbonne’s Architecture: Taking the Country’s side: Agriculture and Architecture.