De la matière au lieu. Petit traité d'architecture quantique
The FMSH is pleased to welcome La Commune publishing house for an evening presentation of the book De la matière au lieu. Petit traité d'architecture quantique (From Matter to Place: A Short Treatise on Quantum Architecture).
During this event, the author of the book, Cristiana Mazzoni, will present her work and discuss it with Roland Huesca, professor emeritus of aesthetics at the University of Lorraine.
After the presentation, you will have the opportunity to ask our guests any questions you may have.
De la matière au lieu. Petit traité d'architecture quantique.
This book offers a reinterpretation of architecture that goes beyond its formal, functional and proportional dimensions. It embarks on a conceptual journey in which each chapter aims to highlight the immaterial fabric of built spaces: their capacity to welcome emotions, activate memory and inscribe human experience in a continuity that transcends the present moment.
At the intersection of history, philosophy, science and the arts, the book develops an original interpretative framework, weaving links between disciplines and paradigms that are usually disjointed. It draws on major figures – architects, thinkers, poets – as well as lesser-known but fundamental references, sketched out in short portraits that punctuate the reading journey and enrich its approach.
The analysis draws on a diverse range of theoretical contributions: scientific discoveries, founding narratives, philosophical hypotheses and constructive practices, articulated in a cross-disciplinary language. Architecture is viewed as a dynamic matrix, in constant interaction with natural environments, energy flows, forms of thought and urban dynamics. From this perspective, architecture is understood as a field of potentialities, capable of responding to contemporary challenges—ecological, social, technological—by renewing its relationships with time, light, water, and the visible and invisible forces that structure the inhabited world.
Rooted in both a critical tradition and a forward-looking approach, this book aims to contribute to a rethinking of the built environment by rehabilitating, at the heart of architectural materiality, the sensitive and symbolic dimension of human habitation.
Cristiana Mazzoni, a French-Italian architect and academic, graduated from the Istituto Universitario di Architettura di Venezia (IUAV, 1989), where she was trained by Aldo Rossi, among others. In 1990, she moved to France to pursue a career combining research, teaching and architectural practice. In 2000, she obtained a doctorate in urban planning from the University of Paris-VIII-Vincennes-Saint-Denis, followed by a habilitation to supervise research (HDR) in 2008, devoted to a critical reading of the city from the perspective of the Tendenza.
A professor at the École Nationale Supérieure d'Architecture de Paris-Belleville, Cristiana Mazzoni has taught for over thirty years at several architecture schools in France. She has directed leading research laboratories, including UMR AUSser (CNRS) and the AMUP laboratory in Strasbourg, supervised numerous doctoral theses and contributed to renewing thinking on the city, metropolises and major urban events.
Since 2025, she has been co-director of the Paris Institute for Research in Architecture, Urban Planning and Society (IPRAUS) and chairs the Franco-Chinese MAGE Chair (Metropolises and Architecture of Major Events), in partnership with ENSAPB and CAUP-Tongji University in Shanghai.
A member of the Île-de-France Order of Architects, she founded the CMYT studio with Yannis Tsiomis in the late 1990s, followed by Atelier CMT - Conception, Maîtrise d'œuvre, Technique. Her practice and research explore urban forms, metropolitan change and the cultural and political dimensions of architecture.
Author and editor of numerous books, she has published Gares. Architectures 1990-2010, La Tendenza, une avant-garde italienne. 1950-1980, De la ville-parc à l’immeuble à cour ouverte. Paris 1919-1939 and Paris, Métropoles en miroir. Her work, at the crossroads of history, theory and design, makes her a major figure in contemporary architectural thought.
Author of essays and novels, Roland Huesca is professor emeritus of aesthetics at the University of Lorraine. Winner of the ADRERUS thesis prize in 1998, finalist in the Nyon international competition in 1985 with INEX, winner of the Ministry of Culture's creative grant in 1992 with Samarkande, his former career as a dancer/choreographer underpins much of his research and analysis. He was the long-time editor of the collection La vie des oeuvres (The Life of Works) published by Place in Paris
Some Artistic Practices in the Work of Sophie Calle
DÉCRIPT in dialogue | The Once and Future World Order
The Concept of Constitution and the Control of the Constitutional Amendment Process
