The Arab world and its civilization and values, its past and its future, needs to be better known and understood in the West. The architecture of the institute takes into account many different dialectical relations: those inherent in the site, the border between traditional urban fabric of Paris, the Faubourg Saint-Germain and the fabric of contemporary Université de Jussieu, and linking the different Arab and Western cultures, those related to notions of history and modernity and relations stemming from the ideas of interiority and openness.