Metropolises of Pacific Asia

The ‘Metropolises of Pacific Asia' (MAP) training programme constituted an adventure of astonishing longevity. As the heir to the ‘Eastern Cities' programme founded in 1981, MAP brought together the architectural schools of Paris-La Villette and Paris-Belleville and the French institute of urbanism until2005, and has been pursued since in separate forms at each institution. The programme was developed by the new generation of teachersand researchers forged by the anti-establishment events of May 1968 and benefitted from a grounding in the humanities and social sciences, forming part of a diverse body of architectural and urban studies on non-Western cultural centres and the Pacific Asia region in particular. This innovative educational approach within French academia was part ofa larger geopolitical and societal evolution that proved decisive for the transformation of study subjects and territories, moving from the city tothe metropolis, from Eastern Asia to an emergingPacific-oriented Asia positioned at the very heart of a new global economic system that would profoundly infl uence the region's accelerated urbanisation.This extensive survey brings together numerous first-hand accounts, interviews and archival documents, presenting the history and theoretical positioning of the MAP training within this context of mutation. It analyses MAP's educational features and facilities, as well as its legacies, fi nally providing a city-bycityexamination of the work carried out by the students, both in situ and in the studio.