UNESCO Headquarters, or Maison de l'UNESCO, is a building inaugurated on 3 November 1958 at number 7

Place de Fontenoy The Place de Fontenoy () is a square in Paris, France, named after the victory of Maréchal Maurice de Saxe in the Battle of Fontenoy. At number 7 is the World Heritage Centre,UNESCOContact and visit Unesco/ref>the headquarters of the UNESCO ...

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...

, to serve as the headquarters for the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (

UNESCO The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) aimed at promoting world peace and security through international cooperation in education, arts, sciences and culture. It ...

). It is a building that can be visited freely.

Design

The design of the UNESCO Headquarters building was the combined work of three architects:

Bernard Zehrfuss Bernard Louis Zehrfuss (Angers, 20 October 1911 – Neuilly-sur-Seine, 3 July 1996) was a French architect. Life He was born at Angers, into a family that had fled from the Alsace in 1870 after the Franco-Prussian War. Zehrfuss's father was ki ...

(France), Marcel Breuer (Hungary), and Pier Luigi Nervi (Italy). Plans were also validated by an international committee of five architects composed of Lucio Costa (Brazil), Walter Gropius (Germany/United States),

Le Corbusier Charles-Édouard Jeanneret (6 October 188727 August 1965), known as Le Corbusier ( , , ), was a Swiss-French architect, designer, painter, urban planner, writer, and one of the pioneers of what is now regarded as modern architecture. He was ...

(France), Sven Markelius (Sweden) and

Ernesto Nathan Rogers Ernesto Nathan Rogers (March 16, 1909 – November 7, 1969) was an Italian architect, writer and educator. Biography Born in Trieste, then in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, he graduated from the Politecnico di Milano, Italy in 1932. He is the cous ...

(Italy), with the collaboration of

Eero Saarinen Eero Saarinen (, ; August 20, 1910 – September 1, 1961) was a Finnish-American architect and industrial designer noted for his wide-ranging array of designs for buildings and monuments. Saarinen is best known for designing the General Motors ...

(Finland).

Description

The main building, which houses the secretariat, consists of seven floors forming a three-pointed star. To this is added a building called the "accordion" and a cubic building, which is intended for permanent delegations and non-governmental organisations. These buildings occupy a trapezoidal area of land measuring , cut in the northeast corner of the semi-circular shape of the Place de Fontenoy. It is bordered by avenues of Saxony, Segur de Suffren and Lowendal.

Relations with France

The land on which the building is built is the property of the French State. By a decree of 22 December 1952, it was assigned to the Foreign Ministry to put at the disposal of UNESCO. This was done by a lease for a term of 99 years, renewable at a nominal rent (1000 francs per year), near the end of the lease. In addition, the residence of this intergovernmental organization on the French territory is governed by a headquarters agreement that defines its privileges and immunities. Both agreements were signed in Paris in 1954, respectively on 25 June and 25 July. The French Parliament approved the lease by a law enacted on 6 August 1955, authorized the President of the Republic to ratify the Headquarters Agreement. The Headquarters Agreement entered into force on 23 November 1955. It was published by a decree of 11 January 1956. Panorama of Paris from the top of UNESCO

Panorama of Paris from the top of UNESCO

World Heritage Centre in Japan

In December 2017, the 'Mt. Fuji World Heritage Centre, Shizuoka' was opened in Fujinomiya city. The appointed director was Atsuko Toyama, a 79-year old former bureaucrat of the Ministry of Education. Despite a striking building designed by world-famous architect Shigeru Ban, the Shizuoka World Heritage Centre quickly became a focus of controversy due to two out of five researchers quitting several months after the official opening, citing concerns of academic freedom and harassment. Notwithstanding continuing controversy,

Shizuoka Prefecture is a prefecture of Japan located in the Chūbu region of Honshu. Shizuoka Prefecture has a population of 3,637,998 and has a geographic area of . Shizuoka Prefecture borders Kanagawa Prefecture to the east, Yamanashi Prefecture to the northea ...

and its governor

Heita Kawakatsu has been the governor of Shizuoka Prefecture since 2009 and is currently serving his fourth term. He completed his D.Phil at wolfson college, Oxford, under Professor Peter Mathias and was Professor of Economics History at Waseda University, Tokyo ...

have denied any wrong doing. ��士山世界遺産センター、２教授退職しピンチ��Yomiuri Newspaper』Morning edition, April 3, 2018

References

Bibliography

* ''Le Siège de l'Unesco à Paris'', preface by Luther Evans, introduction by

Françoise Choay Françoise Choay (born 29 March 1925) is a French architectural and urban historian and theorist. Since 1973, she has been a professor at the University of Paris.Akademie der Kunste"Biography" (in German) retrieved 19 August 2014 She has also been a ...

, photographs by

Lucien Hervé Lucien Hervé (born László Elkán on 7 August 1910 in Hungary, died 26 June 2007 in Paris) was a Hungarian photographer. He was notable for his architectural photography, beginning with his work for Le Corbusier. Biography * 1910 : Born as ...

Gerd Hatje Gerd Hatje (14 April 1915 – 24 July 2007) was a German publisher. The publishing house that he founded in 1945, named the Humanitas Verlag, renamed in 1947 as Verlag Gerd Hatje, is internationally known for contemporary art, photography and archi ...

, Stuttgart, 1958.

External links

* {{Authority control 1958 establishments in France Museums in Paris Tourist attractions in Paris Buildings and structures in the 7th arrondissement of Paris Museums established in 1958 UNESCO Marcel Breuer buildings Pier Luigi Nervi buildings