Eléonore Marantz

Éléonore Marantz (France, 1975) is an architectural historian and lecturer at the Université Paris 1-Panthéon-Sorbonne. A specialist in contemporary architectural history, her research focuses on the frameworks and forms of twentieth-century architectural production. She has published several reference works on the architectural history of universities and higher education establishments. For the past ten years, her work has focused on the pre- and post-Sixties. The specific research she has devoted to the sea change in architectural education in the 1960s and 1970s provided the inspiration for the exhibition “Mai 68. L’architecture aussi!” (Paris, Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine, 2018), which she curated with Caroline Maniaque and Jean-Louis Violeau.

In residence at Villa Medici, Éléonore Marantz will be researching the “last” architects to win the Premier Grand Prix de Rome (1938-1967), who resided at Villa Medici between 1946 and 1971. The aim is to “x-ray” a generation of architects who were trained and selected to form the future professional elite, but who in fact developed approaches that sometimes went against the grain of prevailing trends. In addition to examining what connects them and what separates them, this research aims to shed light on the last “age” of the Grand Prix de Rome in architecture, the legitimacy of which was hotly debated at the time. It will also shed new light on the “life” of the Roman institution and its boarders before, during and after May 68, offering a further perspective on a “May 68 seen and lived from Rome”.