During the spring 2012 semester in Paris a collaboration took place between Columbia

University’s New York/Paris program and the École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture Paris

– Malaquais. Through the coordination of Patrick O’Connor, the two student bodies met

over the course of the semester, in seminar format, to ignite a multicultural discussion

and consider the development of Paris from a distinctively international point of view

(Columbia), in comparison to the native perspective (Malaquais).



This body of work by architecture and urban studies students from Columbia University was

produced as part of the Architecture, Planning and Preservation course of the New York/Paris

program, instructed and edited by Michael Herrman and based upon the chapters “Travesty:

Architecture of Distraction” and “Illusory Cities” in Hypercontextuality: The Architecture

of Displacement and Placelessness (Michael Herrman, CNR 2009, Rome).



In conjunction, the essays produced by a group of third year R6 students at the École

Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture Paris – Malaquais discussed and researched various

themes related to representations of the city.



The end result of this collaboration is a

rich collection of insights into how the city is perceived, questioned, represented, and

the challenge it raises for architecture and urban planning. This publication contains a

selection of the best student work produced during this collaboration as selected by Michael

Herrman and Brent Patterson.



A special thank you to Patrick O’Connor and Anne Wei of Columbia University and Nasrine

Seraji and Catherine Urbain of École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture Paris – Malaquais

for their administrative support with this collaboration.