Musée sans bâtiment X Century of Cité internationale universitaire de Paris
Yona Friedman•
The Musée sans bâtiment is a museum without doors, walls or roofs, open to exhibitions by all, to collections by local residents, to public debates, to social customs, economies and ecologies.
The Museum without a Building consists of some twenty cubes, designed using large steel hoops placed freely on the site. “They serve as a support for artworks made from packaging or other objects: graphic works, collages, photographs or graffiti partly created by the public.” (Yona Friedman) The Museum without a Building is open to all.
OPENING / Saturday April 5 from 2pm
OPEN / every day from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m.
78 DAYS / 1014 opening hours
TERRASSES / de la Maison de l’Île-de-France et de la Fondation Avicenne,
CIUP - Paris 14ème / RER B & tram : Cité universitaire
FREE ACCES / open air
FINISSAGE / Saturday June 21 from 2pm
DOWNLOAD - Press kit: dossier-presse_ciupxcneai.pdf
Yona Friedman, La Cité internationale universitaire de Paris, ils green spaces, le cneai =, la Maison de L’Île-Saint-Denis, La Fondation Avicenne, la résidence Julie-Victoire Daubié, Guilain Roussel, Gilles Clément, Odilon Coutarel, les hypervoisins, le Master 2 Sciences et Techniques de l’exposition - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, le collectif suture-zéro, Sinae Lee, le Bureau des résidents de la CiuP, Pierre Duval, Sophie Piermattei, Corentin Loubet, l’École National Supérieur des Arts Décoratifs, la Commission nationale de l’informatique et des libertés (CNIL), La Quadrature du Net, Compagnie Art Me Up, Bureau des résidents … And all those who will be inventing projects this spring.
In 2025, the Cité internationale universitaire de Paris celebrates its 100th anniversary. From March to December 2025, the campus will vibrate to the rhythm of cultural, scientific and festive events open to all. This anniversary is an opportunity to recall its commitment to peace, fraternity and dialogue between cultures. Since 1925, against the backdrop of the First World War, the Cité internationale has been a unique place where students, researchers and artists from all over the world live together and learn to build a common future. They all share the same goal: to understand each other better and find solutions together to the world’s major challenges.
To mark the centenary of the Cité internationale universitaire de Paris, Maison Île-de-France, Fondation Avicenne, Résidence Julie-Victoire Daubié and cneai = Centre d’art invite you to take part in their joint program. For the occasion, architect and theorist Yona Friedman’s Museum without a Building is deployed on several sites in the Cité internationale universitaire de Paris. This outdoor, unifying museum, which can be activated by all, is synonymous with a link between worlds. Its aim is to diversify and rethink our relational spaces.
As early as 1919, André Honnorat, one of the founders of the Cité Universitaire, expressed the wish to create “a place where young people from all countries can, at the age when lasting friendships are made, have contacts that enable them to get to know and appreciate each other”.
In 1920, as Minister of Public Instruction and Fine Arts, he and Paul Appell, mathematician and Rector of the University of Paris, conceived the idea of a Cité designed to welcome students from Parisian universities. For both men, advocates of an internationalist pacifism and influential members of circles working around the League of Nations, the education of young people and exchanges between countries could provide a foundation for peace and prevent the recurrence of world conflict. Great international patrons helped the founders’ dream take shape. The first, Emile Deutsch de la Meurthe, gave impetus to the movement with the Foundation bearing his name, which was inaugurated in 1925. Architect Lucien Bechmann was chosen to build a series of pavilions equipped with all the modern comforts of the time, reflecting the ambition the founders had placed in the Cité Universitaire.
More information : Centenaire de la Cité internationale universitaire de Paris
The Musée sans bâtiment is a museum without doors, without walls, without roofs, open to everyone’s exhibits, to residents’ collections, to public debates, to social customs, to economies, to ecologies. The Museum without a Building consists of some twenty cubes, designed using large steel hoops laid out freely on the site. “They serve as a support for artworks made from packaging or other objects: graphic works, collages, photographs or graffiti partly created by the public.” (Yona Friedman) The Musée sans bâtiment is open to all. For this new edition of the Musée sans bâtiment, at the Cité internationale universitaire de Paris, associations, students and all regular visitors to the Cité will be able to experience the Musée sans bâtiment through a cultural and exhibition program, enhanced by improvised installations by local residents. The public will be able to take possession of the museum through various workshops, conferences, readings, etc…
The cneai =, the Maison d’Île-de-France, the Fondation Avicenne and the Résidence Julie-Victoire Daubié will propose a program including students, artists, researchers, landscape architects, theorists, urban planners and associations. As Yona Friedman wished, everyone can be a player in the Musée sans bâtiment. As part of the Centenary of the Cité Universitaire Internationale de Paris, Cité Universitaire residents, shopkeepers, teachers, regular visitors, associations, groups of friends, collectives and interlocutors are all free to inhabit the Musée sans bâtiment.
The construction of this house is part of the Cité internationale’s development project, Cité 2025. The Maison de l’Île-de-France is the first positive-energy collective housing building to be built in the Île-de-France region, using 100% solar power and energy recovery. It is the result of a joint commitment by the Île-de-France region and Cité internationale to invest in an environmentally-friendly technological future. It puts the Cité internationale at the forefront of environmentally-friendly collective construction. La Maison is the new place for cultural and scientific outings in Paris, offering a wide range of cultural, scientific and academic events open to the public.
The Fondation Avicenne, built in 1969 by Claude Parent and André Bloc, in association with Iranian architects Hedar Ghiai and Mossem Foroughi, marks the end of the Cité internationale’s second post-World War II construction period. Initially known as the Maison de l’Iran, it was transferred to the Cité internationale in 1972 and renamed the Fondation Avicenne, after the great 11th-century Persian physician and philosopher.
Named Julie-Victoire Daubié, in honor of France’s first baccalaureate graduate in 1861, the residence was financed by the City of Paris, in partnership with the Île-de-France Region. The building is owned by the Régie Immobilière de la Ville de Paris. Its construction is part of the “Cité 2025” development plan.
The cneai = center d’art composé, navigué, engagé, abrité, imaginé is a place for research, production, residency and dissemination of contemporary art. Since 1997, cneai = has been dedicated to the crossroads between theoretical research, experimental practice and support for artists and the public. In addition to its role as an art center, the cneai holds a large number of works of art and documents relating to the fields of art publishing, the printed image and the artist’s book. The multi-site art center, based in the Paris region, has three collections: Yona Friedman, FMRA and Multiples, as well as a Maison d’édition and a Maison Flaubert.
Maison Flottante, Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec’s artist residency boat moored in Poses, Normandy.