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Object Timeline

2006

  • Work on this object began.

2013

  • We acquired this object.

2014

2015

2025

  • You found it!

Poster, Le Havre, Patrimoine mondial de l’humanité [Le Havre, World Heritage of Humanity]

This is a Poster. It was designed by Philippe Apeloig and published by Philippe Apeloig and printed by Serica. It is dated 2006 and we acquired it in 2013. Its medium is screenprint. It is a part of the Drawings, Prints, and Graphic Design department.

During World War II, the French city of Le Havre was severely bombed. Auguste Perret, a pioneering French modernist architect, was tasked with rebuilding the city. Perret’s reconstruction is considered exceptional for its seamless integration of the city’s extant historic structures with modern concrete construction and design innovations. Perret’s new buildings for Le Havre were conceived of within a 6.24-meter-square modular system.

Philippe Apeloig designed this poster in 2006 to commemorate the UNESCO designation of the French city of Le Havre as a World Heritage Site. His design takes Le Havre’s innovative architecture as its subject and Perret’s conception of the city as a Gesamtkunstwerk as its framework. Graphic renditions of the standardized facades of three of Perret’s buildings are laid atop one another, each in a different primary color. The areas where the different buildings overlap generate secondary colors, while the text forms echo the windows in which they appear to sit. Apeloig’s poster evokes the harmony of the modular system employed by Perret.

It is credited Gift of Philippe Apeloig.

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Its dimensions are

118.5 x 175 cm (46 7/16 in. x 5 ft. 8 7/8 in.)

Cite this object as

Poster, Le Havre, Patrimoine mondial de l’humanité [Le Havre, World Heritage of Humanity]; Designed by Philippe Apeloig (French, b. 1962); Printed by Serica; France; screenprint; 118.5 x 175 cm (46 7/16 in. x 5 ft. 8 7/8 in.); Gift of Philippe Apeloig; 2013-16-1

This object was previously on display as a part of the exhibition Making Design: Recent Acquisitions.

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<ref name=CH>{{cite web |url=https://www-6.collection.cooperhewitt.org/objects/35460841/ |title=Poster, Le Havre, Patrimoine mondial de l’humanité [Le Havre, World Heritage of Humanity] |author=Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum |accessdate=19 March 2025 |publisher=Smithsonian Institution}}</ref>