Elisabeth Essaïan

Elisabeth Essaïan
Period: 2008-2009
Profession: Architect Elisabeth Essaïan is an architect who graduated from the Ecole d’architecture de Paris-Belleville in 1996. Following her diploma, devoted to Oradour-sur-Glane, in 1997 she produced an exhibition on the reconstruction of the new town and an urban study on the redevelopment of this historic site and its surroundings. She then turned her attention to research, writing a thesis on Moscow’s 1935 General Reconstruction Plan. Defended in 2006, this work was awarded two prizes in 2007: the City Thesis Prize and the Architecture Academy Thesis Prize. It is currently being rewritten for publication by Editions Parenthèses. Since 1997, Elisabeth Essaïan has taught architectural and urban design and analysis at various schools of architecture (EA Paris-Belleville, EA de la Ville et du Territoire, EA de Normandie). She has also participated in the pedagogical project of the Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Paysage de Versailles, collaborated on various urban research programs at the EHESS and ENS in Paris, and was a member of the museographic team at the Cité d’Architecture et du Patrimoine. His main areas of research concern the circulation of models, relations between political and professional players, morphological transformations, the manufacturing process of architectural and urban projects, and the vocabulary of the city. The research proposed for the Villa Medici is devoted to the travels of Soviet architects in Italy during the Thirties, in the context of the elaboration of urban plans for Moscow and Rome. Some of the results of this work were presented at the colloquium co-organized with Marylène Malbert, “Pourquoi l’Italie: Arts visuels et architecture: la place de l’Italie au XXe siècle”, held at Villa Medici from March 12 to 14, 2009. The project is set to continue with an exhibition based on the graphic archives held at Moscow’s Museum of Architecture, the Shchusev Museum.