Thirty years after the inauguration of the headquarters of the Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain on the Boulevard Raspail in Paris, by Jean Nouvel (one of his best buildings) and forty years after the creation of the institution by Alain Dominique Perrin (October 20, 1984), to celebrate its 40th anniversary, the works of the new building also designed by Ateliers Jean Nouvel have been unveiled.

The new facilities are located in the historic Place du Palais-Royal in Paris, with the works already advanced and it is expected to be inaugurated at the end of 2025.

This new headquarters of the Cartier Foundation helps to reaffirm the urban and cultural position of the city of Paris, as well as on the world scene of contemporary art. 

Following the interesting ex novo building on Boulevard Raspail in 1994, the new intervention in an existing structure, also by Jean Nouvel, represents a reinvention of the institution, which is located within an imposing Haussmann building, originally built as part of Napoleon III's urban redevelopment initiative, and opened as the Grand Hôtel du Louvre in 1855.

The building would later change its programme and in 1863 it became the Grands Magasins du Louvre before finally becoming the Louvre des Antiquaires in 1978.

The façades, composed of large windows opening onto the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, the Rue de Rivoli and the Place du Palais-Royal, are the link to an impressive interior transformation that covers 8,500 square metres of public spaces; 6,500 square metres of exhibition space, including five 1,200 square metre mobile platforms that, thanks to large hydraulic jacks, can modify the surface and the articulation and interior connections of the building.

Building site view of the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain’s future premises, place du Palais-Royal, Paris. View of platform 1 in construction. December 2023. Photograph by Martin Argyroglo

Building inside view of the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain’s future premises, place du Palais-Royal, Paris. View of platform 1 in construction. December 2023. Photograph by Martin Argyroglo.

Vista interior del edificio de la futura sede de la Fundación Cartier para el arte contemporáneo, en la plaza del Palais-Royal, París. Vista de la plataforma 1 en construcción. Diciembre de 2023. Fotografía de Martin Argyroglo.

Building inside view of the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain’s future premises, place du Palais-Royal, Paris. Level view of the -1.May 2023. Photograph by Martin Argyroglo.

The interior of this historic building will feature an imposing set of spaces that can reach up to 11 metres in height. The space also has 1,200 square metres of walkways with views of the volumes created by the versatility and mobility of the platforms, which become the protagonists of Nouvel's project. It will provide a great capacity for spatial experimentation for the presentation of the artists' work.

"Moving into such an impressive site, in terms of location and history, entails a form of invention. And what is invented is not automatically seen in the steel or stone. The space is marked by a different way of doing: a way of conceiving how artists can have maximum power of expression. A site such as this one calls for boldness, courage that artists might not necessarily demonstrate in other institutional spaces. The Fondation Cartier will likely be the institution offering the greatest differentiation of its spaces, the most diverse exhibition forms and viewpoints. Here, it is possible to do what cannot be done elsewhere, by shifting the system of the act of showing".

Jean Nouvel

Vista del sitio de construcción de las futuras instalaciones de la Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, place du Palais-Royal, París. Visualización de la plataforma 1 con vistas a la Rue de Rivoli por Jean Nouvel / ADAGP, París, 2024.

Cartier Foundation exhibition in the 7-metre-high windows of the Haussmannian building, a tribute to the artists who have collaborated with the institution throughout its history. Photograph by Martin Argyroglo.

To celebrate the new opening, the Cartier Foundation is displaying in the 7-metre-high windows of the Haussmannian building a tribute to the artists who have collaborated with the institution throughout its history, including thirty portraits such as Nouvel himself, Agnès Varda, Claudia Andujar, Takeshi Kitano, Patti Smith, Sheroanawe Hakihiiwe, Marie Losier and Ron Mueck.

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Ateliers Jean Nouvel. Architect.- Jean Nouvel.
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Opening.- 2025.

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Place du Palais-Royal, Paris, France.

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Jean Nouvel, (born August 12, 1945) is a French architect. Nouvel studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and was a founding member of Mars 1976 and Syndicat de l'Architecture. He has obtained a number of prestigious distinctions over the course of his career, including the Aga Khan Award for Architecture (technically, the prize was awarded for the Institut du Monde Arabe which Nouvel designed), the Wolf Prize in Arts in 2005 and the Pritzker Prize in 2008.

Nouvel was awarded the Pritzker Prize, architecture's highest honour, in 2008, for his work on more than 200 projects, among them, in the words of The New York Times, the "exotically louvered" Arab World Institute, the bullet-shaped and "candy-colored" Torre Agbar in Barcelona, the "muscular" Guthrie Theater with its cantilevered bridge in Minneapolis, and in Paris, the "defiant, mysterious and wildly eccentric" Musée du quai Branly (2006) and the Philharmonie de Paris (a "trip into the unknown" c. 2012).

Pritzker points to several more major works: in Europe, the Cartier Foundation for Contemporary Art (1994), the Culture and Convention Center in Lucerne (2000), the Opéra Nouvel in Lyon (1993) , Expo 2002 in Switzerland and, under construction, the Copenhagen Concert Hall and the courthouse in Nantes (2000); as well as two tall towers in planning in North America, Tour Verre in New York City and a cancelled condominium tower in Los Angeles. International cultural projects such as the Abu Dhabi Louvre, the Philharmonic Hall in Paris, the Qatar National Museum in Doha, or the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2010 in London.

In its citation, the jury of the Pritzker prize noted:

Of the many phrases that might be used to describe the career of architect Jean Nouvel, foremost are those that emphasize his courageous pursuit of new ideas and his challenge of accepted norms in order to stretch the boundaries of the field. [...] The jury acknowledged the ‘persistence, imagination, exuberance, and, above all, an insatiable urge for creative experimentation’ as qualities abundant in Nouvel’s work.

Among his principal completed projects, we find the Arab World Institute in Paris, the Cartier Foundation and the Quai Branly museum in Paris, the Culture and Congress Center KKL in Lucerne, the extension of the Queen Sofia Arts Center in Madrid, the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, the Philharmonic of Paris…
 
Among the projects currently under studies or under construction: the “53W53, Tour de Verre” integrating the extension of the MoMA galleries in New York, the residential towers “Le Nouvel” in Kuala Lumpur, “Anderson 18” and “Ardmore” in Singapore and “Rosewood” in São Paulo, the office towers “Hekla” and “Duo” in Paris, the cultural complex “The Artists’ Garden” in Qingdao or the National Art Museum of China NAMOC in Beijing… The design of the Louvre Abu Dhabi began in 2006 with Jean Nouvel’s Partner Architect Hala Wardé.
 

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