A Grand Parisian Night at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design

Six months after the success of the Olympic Games, this panel proposes a debate on the joint futures of the Parisian city center and its suburbs. As the city of Paris has just adopted new urban planning rules aimed at adapting the city to climate change (Bioclimatic Land Use Plan), many challenges remain for a metropolis still characterized by fragmentation between the historic city center and its banlieues.

Infrastructural and socio-economic challenges will be discussed, from transportation systems to the equitable distribution of housing and health facilities, and the flux of Parisians making their way through these networks.

The democratic issues of a governance model ruled by so many levels and stakeholders, from the city of Paris to neighboring suburban municipalities, a metropolitan political entity, the region and the State will additionally be debated. This roundtable will offer a reflection on the specific, and universal, challenges of shaping a metropolitian region like the Grand Paris—and what roles architects, planners, designers and intellectuals/artists can play to shape this fabric, ever-changing and bound not to remain frozen in time.

Developed by the Harvard Graduate School of Design and designed by Pierre-Emmanuel Becherand and Magda Maaoui, this event is organized in partnership with Villa Albertine.

This event is open to all without registration.

The Harvard Graduate School of Design is the graduate school of design at Harvard University, offering master’s and doctoral degrees in architecture, landscape, urban planning, urban design, real estate, and design studies

Panelists

• Lamia El Aaraje, Deputy Mayor of Paris, in Charge of Urban Planning, Architecture, and Greater Paris
• Pierre-Emmanuel Becherand, Loeb Fellow 2025, Harvard Graduate School of Design
• Victoire Bourgois, Artist
• Nicola Delon, Architect, Encore Heureux
• Magda Maaoui, Assistant Professor of Urban Planning
• Pauline Marchetti, Architect, Ferrier Marchetti Studio
• Antoine Picon, G. Ware Travelstead Professor of the History of Architecture and Technology, Harvard Graduate School of Design