Sébastien Marot

Born in 1961, Sébastien Marot is a philosopher by training and was General Delegate of the Société Française des Architectes from 1986 to 2002, where he founded and edited the Tribune d’histoire et d’actualité de l’architecture, followed by the journal Le Visiteur. His research and publications have focused on the genealogy of contemporary theories and practices in architecture, urban planning and landscape architecture, and in particular on the staging of the historical depth of situations constructed by these different disciplines.

Welcomed as a researcher at the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal in 2004-2005, Sébastien Marot defended a thesis in history entitled Palimpsestuous Ithaca at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in 2008, described as a ‘manifesto on suburbanism’. He is currently working on the publication of this thesis. His essays and research on architecture and landscape led the Académie d'Architecture to award him the medal for architectural analysis in 2004 and the prize for research and doctoral thesis in architecture in 2010.

In 2008, Sébastien Marot was a member of the scientific advisory board for the Greater Paris consultation and the Ignis Mutat Res call for tenders: *‘Architecture, the city and landscapes through the prism of energy’ launched in 2011 by the Ministry of Culture, the Ministry of Ecology and the Atelier International du Grand Paris. As part of the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale and for the exhibition curated by Rem Koolhaas/AMO on the Elements of Architecture, he collaborated on the section devoted to the hearth/fireplace (see Sébastien Marot, Rem Koolhaas, Harvard GSD, Fireplace, Marsilio 2014).

In addition to his editorial and critical activities, Sébastien Marot has been invited to teach at numerous architecture and landscape schools in Europe and the United States: IAUG (Geneva), ENSP (Versailles), AA School (London), GSD Harvard (Boston), Upenn (Philadelphia), Cornell (Ithaca), University of Montreal, ETHZ (Zurich), etc. He is currently a professor at ENSA Paris-Est, where he is one of the founding members and teaches, as he does at Harvard and EPFL, the history of the environment and environmental issues related to architecture and landscape.

Author of several books, including L’Art de la mémoire, le territoire et l’architecture (La Villette, 2010), Sébastien Marot co-edits with Éric Alonzo the journal published by the École d'architecture de la ville & des territoires entitled Marnes: documents d'architecture (Éditions de La Villette), which aims, among other things, to translate and present reference texts that have not previously been published in French.

In October 2017, Sébastien Marot obtained his habilitation à diriger des recherches (HDR) at the École, entitled Architecture et histoire de l'environnement : de l'art de la mémoire à l'art d'espérer (Architecture and environmental history: from the art of memory to the art of hope).

In 2019, he curated the exhibition presented as part of the Lisbon Architecture Triennale: Taking the Country's Side: Agriculture and Architecture.