The Jussieu Campus (Campus Universitaire de Jussieu) is a higher education campus located in the 5th arrondissement of Paris, France, which is the main campus of the Pierre and Marie Curie University (Paris VI).
Because of reconstruction programs in progress (see below), various facilities have been moved out of the campus to other parts of Paris.
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The campus was opened in 1959 and eventually it would host a great part of the old faculty of sciences of the Sorbonne. Built on the site of the old "Halle aux vins," a wine market created by Napoleon Bonaparte, the campus remains incomplete to this day. In 1957, the first university buildings were built along the Eastern bank of the River Seine (le quai Saint-Bernard), and Rue Cuvier. In order to allow the wine to remain on the site, the architects planned to construct the buildings on stilts above the roads of the market.
However, in 1964, with over 20,000 science students graduating high school (the baby boom generation), the old Sorbonne could not accommodate the influx of students. André Malraux entrusted the architect Édouard Albert with the task of rapidly constructing a new science campus on the site. Albert's grand vision of modular metallic buildings, designed to facilitate interdisciplinary work and improve teaching, was never achieved, and eventually abandoned in 1972.
Most of the campus consists in a regular grid of 6-floor wings; at the points of intersection are staircases and elevators. The grid is built on a large elevated slab, and the wings do not reach to the bottom of the slab, making it possible to walk across the campus without crossing the buildings. Underneath the slab are ground-level and underground facilities, including a car park. The main front of Jussieu is bounded by a 10 meter deep dry moat, and many pedestrian entrances are bridges over this moat that can be readily secured. The high security features of the campus are likely a response to the student riots that occurred in 1968 in this neighborhood.
While independent, the two universities and the institute share facilities, such as libraries, and often have joint research groups. Certain of the research libraries of the campus (in mathematics, for instance) are among the largest and with the widest selection of books in France.
In the center of the campus is the Tour Zamansky, or Tour Jussieu, with 24 floors and a height of 90 meters. The tower is named after a senior member of a University. The tower is dedicated to an administrative use.
Campus restaurants are located in the northeast corner of the campus, many of which afford a pleasant view of the Seine River.
The campus is generally decried as an architectural failure. The hollow space under the building wings enables wind to build up its force, and thus the environment on the slab is unfriendly. The regular grid plan may be confusing, since it is sometimes difficult to know where one is located, especially since not all corridors allow through crossing nowadays (laboratories etc. have often chosen to lock their corridor for safety reasons). The campus has become increasingly degraded since its erection, and its older tower stairwells and exteriors are covered in perpetual graffiti—towers renovated since about 2000 are constantly kept in a cleaner state by painting over new graffitis.
The most worrisome particularity of the Jussieu architecture is its extensive use of asbestos as a fire retardant. Asbestos fibers are carcinogenic when inhaled, and as a consequence the use of asbestos in buildings is prohibited in France, but wasn't at the time when the campus was built. The risks are particularly acute for workers who maintain the building (drilling walls etc...). Also, it seems that the fire retardation is not really sufficient, which, coupled with the use of metal for frames, would result in an early collapse in the case of a large fire. An ambitious clean-up program was begun in 1997 after some high-profile protests. The wings are stripped off all equipment, walls etc... to the naked concrete frame, and are then rebuilt in modern materials. Many advocated for the destruction of Jussieu when the asbestos problem was addressed, however, the campus is protected as an architectural type and must be restored to its original condition.
In 1996 Claude Allègre, a well known French politician and scientist, opposed the removal of asbestos from the campus, describing it as harmless and dismissing concerns about it as a form of "psychosis created by leftists".[1] The campus' asbestos is deemed to have killed 22 people and caused serious health problems in 130 others.[2]
The campus is served by the Paris Métro station Jussieu, as well as numerous bus lines.