The Liam Swords Foundation - bursary for Irish Higher education students to study in Paris

Lecture Series 2016

Making strange: The Poetics of the Maison du Peuple, Clichy

In 1917, Viktor Shklovsky described the need for poets and artists to ‘make strange’, to interrupt our familiarity with language and form and thereby encourage us to perceive ordinary relationships anew. Made twenty years later as the joint effort of two architects, a highly inventive metal fabricator, an aviation engineer and an enlightened mayor, the Maison du Peuple at Clichy suggests this same will to question familiar constructions, but this time by means of a building. This lecture will consider the creation of the Maison du Peuple as a poetic enterprise, in both its conceptual and material aspects.

Caption for the photo: Maison du Peuple, Clichy (1935-1938)

Marcel Lods + Eugène Beaudoin (architects), Jean Prouvé (fabricator), Vladimir Bodiansky (engineer).

In the words of the Rev. Liam Swords

'the aim is to establish a grant for a student of talent from the Irish Higher education sector to pursue his/her studies/research/training for an academic year in Paris and to immerse themselves in one of the most culturally diverse cities in the world. Candidates will be chosen from the widest possible groups, e.g., musicians, artists, sculptors, writers, scientists, engineers, scholars, craft-workers, theologians, architects, students of haute cuisine or haute couture, cinematographers etc.'