When L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui asked Jean Nouvel to contribute to this issue dedicated to architectural education, he suggested using a piece he wrote in 1994 for a monographic issue AA dedicated to him. Called “Savoir savoir”, this “sketch of a new structure for teaching architecture” has lost nothing of its strength. In offering to connect the teaching of architecture with travel, Jean Nouvel reminds us that immersion in urban and human reality are the sine qua non conditions to understanding architecture. “Without travel, the teaching of architecture is as absurd as the teaching of surgery was in the days when post-mortem dissection was forbidden, when medical students had no real knowledge of the human body”, he wrote at the time… and still believes.
We have chosen to highlight this paper along with other AA archives, from issue 143, dated 1969, which commented on a revolution that actually took place, the disappearance of the Beaux-Arts system in France.

Click on the cover above to read the full article and find the issue No.420 on the online shop.
Jean Nouvel’s portrait: © Gaston Bergeret.