Michel Écochard Archive

In the mid 1980s, Michel Écochard donated his archives, then located at his offices in Paris, to the Aga Khan Award for Architecture in Geneva. Award staff traveled to Paris and made a selection of materials to archive in Geneva. These included around 500 plans, 1500 slides and large-format positive films, 10,000 negatives in large format and 35-millimeter film strips (often printed in various formats), in black and white and color, 50 reports, books and notes, and a collection of magazine articles and news clippings about the man and his work. 

In his later years, Écochard compiled a series of albums, based on his own photography of both cities and famous sites in general, as well as of his own architectural, planning and archaeological projects. Archnet is presenting these as copies of the originals so as to give more insight into the author.

As Écochard was a keen traveler and photographer, the collection includes many general city and landscape views as well as documentation on planning, architectural, and restoration projects he was involved in the Middle East, Asia, Africa, and Europe. 

In order to facilitate scholars' access to the material, the Aga Khan Award for Architecture gifted the Michel Ecochard Archive to the Aga Khan Documentation Center, MIT Libraries. A representative selection of this archive is in the process of being digitized and made available in this collection. To find out more about the collection, consult archivesspsace.mit.edu.