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 Marcel Lajos Breuer ( ; 21 May 1902 – 1 July 1981), was a Hungarian-born modernist architect and furniture designer. At the Bauhaus he designed the Wassily Chair and the Cesca Chair, which ''The New York Times'' have called some of the most im ...

(Hungary), and

Pier Luigi Nervi Pier Luigi Nervi (21 June 1891 – 9 January 1979) was an Italian engineer and architect. He studied at the University of Bologna graduating in 1913. Nervi taught as a professor of engineering at Rome University from 1946 to 1961 and is known wor ...

(Italy). Plans were also validated by an international committee of five architects composed of

Lucio Costa Lucio is an Italian and Spanish male given name derived from the Latin name ''Lucius''. In Portuguese, the given name is accented Lúcio. Lucio is also an Italian surname. Given name * Lúcio (Lucimar Ferreira da Silva) (born 1978), Brazilia ...

(Brazil),

Walter Gropius Walter Adolph Georg Gropius (18 May 1883 – 5 July 1969) was a German-American architect An architect is a person who plans, designs and oversees the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to provide services in conne ...

(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 Sven Gottfrid Markelius (25 October 1889 – 24 February 1972) was a Swedish modernist architect. Markelius played an important role in the post-war urban planning of Stockholm, for example in the creation of the model suburbs of Vällingby (1950 ...

(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 A non-governmental organization (NGO) or non-governmental organisation (see spelling differences) is an organization that generally is formed independent from government. They are typically nonprofit entities, and many of them are active in ...

. 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 In many countries, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is the government department responsible for the state's diplomacy, bilateral, and multilateral relations affairs as well as for providing support for a country's citizens who are abroad. The entit ...

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 is a city located in central Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 132,507 in 56,655 households, and a population density of 340 persons per km². The total area of the city is . History The city name comes from ...

city. The appointed director was

Atsuko Toyama Toyama Atsuko (遠山敦子) (born December 10, 1938) is a former bureaucrat in the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sport, Science, and Technology. She is a trustee of the Tokyo Organizing Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games ...

, a 79-year old former bureaucrat of the Ministry of Education. Despite a striking building designed by world-famous architect

Shigeru Ban Biography
, The Hyatt Foundation, retrieved 26 March 2014 is a Japanese architect, known for his i ...

, 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, Toky ...

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 Luther Harris Evans (13 October 1902 – 23 December 1981) was an American political scientist who served as the tenth Librarian of Congress and third Director-General of UNESCO. Early life and career Born in Bastrop County, Texas in 1902, Evan ...

, 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