Sunday Escape - Louis Vuitton Foundation

Louvre, d’Orsay, Center George Pompidou, Rodin ... are just some of the most interesting museums in Paris, spaces that contain priceless treasures, real pieces of art history. In recent years, exactly since October 2014, to all these was added to the Louis Vuitton Foundation.

Designed as a “symbol of deep French cultural tradition”, the structure was built by the Canadian architect Frank Gehry and stands as a huge and majestic steel sailing ship navigating in the sixteenth district, amongst the trees of the Bois de Boulogne park, next to the Jardin d’Acclimatation and the skyscrapers of La Défense.

"What inspired me was the idea of building a glass building in Bois, otherwise it could easily seem invasive." - said the archistar, exposing the project - "We have to get something evanescent, considering the restrictions and dimensional limits imposed, but when we presented this project, everyone has given their consent and has been approved. It was expensive, but you could not do otherwise."

Thus it was born a bold building of 12 thousand square meters and 48 meters high, which is spread over an area of 11,000 square meters, 7,000 of which are accessible to the public, with an investment of over 100 million euro. Iceberg, glass house, cloud, boat. There are so many names to define a construction made of 12 gigantic transparent glass curved panels, linked by an elaborate weave of steel and wood beams, which support and detach them from a whitish concrete body.

Precisely these sails made by assembling 3600 glass panels inspired by the Dadaist method of collage and the large fin de siècle greenhouses, as a mirror reflecting the surrounding environment, catalyze the attention of those who observe the Foundation. With this expedient Gehry has tried to “humanize the whole material to give a sense of movement, a sculptural shape able to bring the audience to another type of experience, open to art ".

In 2016 the work of the famous architect pushed this concept further into a temporary installation called L’Observatoire de la lumière, thanks to the artist Daniel Buren. The man, known to color everything he touches, from bridges to buildings, covered the panes of LV Foundation with color filters of red, pink, blue, green, yellow and orange.

If you’ve been fascinated by the Louis Vuitton Foundation architecture, you are in Paris and want to visit it know that at this time it hosts Being Modern: MoMA in Paris, an exhibition dedicated to a wide selection of the most important works of art hosted at MoMA since its opening in 1929 until today, pieces by artists such as Walker Evans, Gustav Klimt, Max Beckmann, Alexander Calder, Paul Cézanne, Marcel Duchamp, René Magritte, Pablo Picasso, Paul Signac and many others.