Les 101 mots de la Cité internationale universitaire de Paris, à l’usage de tous — Collective volume, Archibooks, 24 July 2025

Published for the centenary of the Cité internationale universitaire de Paris (founded in 1925; centenary celebrated in 2025), this book brings together 101 contributions reflecting the spirit, history and international reach of this unique garden campus. 

Bernard Reichen contributes “In Natura”, a personal text offering an inside view of his long-standing relationship with the Cité. He looks back on his involvement from 1999 onwards and develops a demanding, sensitive reading of its urban and landscape legacy, following the founding figures Jean-Claude Nicolas Forestier and Lucien Bechmann. His central argument is that the Cité internationale is a “city within nature”, where the landscape acts as a true urban structure—linking architectures, organising uses, and fostering a calmer form of urbanity.
This contribution resonates with the work carried out by the agency on the Cité internationale development master plan (restoration, park rehabilitation, integration of new pavilions) and reasserts an approach grounded in what is already there, landscape continuity, and the intelligence of inhabited environments.