To the death of Jean-Louise Cohen

On Monday, August 7, 2023, the architect, critic, curator, and historian Jean-Louis Cohen passed away while on vacation in the French Ardennes at the age of 74. His life and work were connected by Paris, where he initially studied architecture in the mid-1970s and later obtained a PhD in art history in 1985. From 1979 to 1983, he led architectural research at the French Ministry of Construction, from 1983 to 1996 he worked at the architecture school in the Paris district of Villemin, and since 1994, he served as a professor of architectural history at the Institute of Art at New York University in Paris. As a guest educator, he also taught at Princeton University in New Jersey. In the late 1990s, he played an important role in the opening of the Cité de l'Architecture et du Patrimoine. He was one of the leading experts on Le Corbusier's work. He published a monograph on Ludwig Mies van der Rohe as well as Frank Gehry. Over his more than fifty-year professional career, he published more than forty books. He earned a reputation as a sharp, knowledgeable colleague and a warm, generous teacher. As a curator, he prepared exhibitions for MoMA in New York, CCA in Montreal, MAXXI in Rome, and DAM in Frankfurt am Main. Among his recent curatorial endeavors is the exhibition “Geografias Construídas” dedicated to the Brazilian architect Paulo Mendes da Rocha, currently taking place at the Portuguese Casa da Arquitectura until February next year.
In addition to his focus on the most prominent architectural figures of the past century, he recognized that our surrounding environment is shaped by countless people. “The contemporary architectural scene cannot be reduced to monuments or the excesses of a handful of famous architects. Architecture today is created by hundreds of thousands of people around the world who work on houses and schools, design hospitals and landscapes. In my opinion, it is a pity when architecture is flattened or understood only as striking works for large states and corporations. Architecture is a practice that can create, and in many cases also shapes, our immediate living environment.”

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