History
The campus was opened in 1951 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.
Read more about this topic: Jussieu Campus
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