Benoît Jacquet

Benoît Jacquet is an architect and architectural theoretician, he lives in Japan since 1999, and teaches at the Graduate School of Architecture of Paris-La Villette.

Born in Nancy in 1973, Benoît Jacquet spent his youth in Algeria, Constantine (1975-1980), in Nancy and Besançon. He studied architecture in Nancy, Barcelona, and graduated from the School of Architecture of Paris-La Villette (M. Arch, 1998). He then studied the evolution of contemporary urban landscape (DEA “Gardens, Landscapes and Territories,” EHESS, 1999) before specialising in the study of Japanese architecture at Kyoto University, as a fellow of the Japanese government (1999-2005). At Kyoto University he defended, in 2002, a master thesis on the influence of milieu in the residential architecture of Shinohara Kazuo, and, in 2006, a doctoral thesis on the principles of monumentality of the architecture of Tange Kenzō. Post-doctoral fellow at the University of Tokyo (Fujimori Terunobu laboratory, 2006-2008), he defended, in 2007, a second PhD thesis under the supervision of Jean-Louis Cohen (NYU) and Nicolas Fiévé (CNRS), at the University of Paris-8, French Institute of Urbanism.

Benoît Jacquet has been a researcher affiliated to the Laboratory of architectural and urban design in the Department of Architecture of Kyoto University (1999-2006), the Laboratory “Architecture, Culture, Society” at the University of Paris-8 (2002-2007), the Laboratory of the History of Architecture, Urbanism and Technology in Asia at the University of Tokyo (2006-2008), and the Research Center on East Asian civilisations at the Collège de France (since 2007). After getting a tenured position as Associate Professor at the EFEO in 2008, Benoît Jacquet was appointed Head of the EFEO Centre in Kyoto until 2017. He has been invited associate professor at Kyoto University (Institute for Research in the Humanities, 2008-2019), at Hiroshima University (Faculty of Engineering, Department of Architecture, since 2010) and lecturer at the Kyoto Project Center of the Worcester Polytechnic Institute (2018-2020).

The researches of Benoît Jacquet concern the history and theory of architecture and urbanism in contemporary Japan. From a comprehensive knowledge of the theories of Japanese modern architecture, his point of view of the history of Japanese architecture is involved in an epistemological perspective of ‘crossed history’ influenced by the dynamics of the cultural transfers between the West and the Far East. His researches deal with the study of the material forms of architecture (from the residential scale to the monumental scale), taken from the fieldwork and the archives.

Firstly attracted by the literary representations of urban landscape, particularly in the detective novel (DEA, 1999), Benoît Jacquet focused on the study of the architectural discourse and the analysis of architects’ texts related to the conception and the realisation of architectural works. His master thesis on the writings of the architect Shinohara Kazuo (1925-2007) put forward the influence of the changes in the physical and social environment on the production of the architectural discourse (texts, drawings, buildings). His doctoral study on the principles of monumentality of the modern architecture in the first works of the architect Tange Kenzō (1913-2005) extends the cultural approach of architecture to a critical time for the modernisation of Japanese architecture: from the thirties to the post-war. His recent researches on the birth of Japanese architectural at the beginning of the 20th century deal with the study of classical Japanese architecture (16th-17th centuries) and its interpretation into the discourse of modern architects. http://www.cca.qc.ca/en/study-centre/1536-scholars-choice-benoit-jacquet-turns-the-pages-of-katsura

Benoît Jacquet
Benoît Jacquet

Maître de conférences

Histoire et théorie de l'architecture au Japon



EFEO Kyoto
Kitashirakawa bettō-chō 29
Kyōto 606-8276, Japon
Tél : + 81 75 701 0882
Fax: + 81 75 701 0883

フランス国立極東学院・京都支部 (EFEO Kyoto)
606-8276 京都市左京区北白川別当町29

benoit.jacquet@efeo.net