This building, located in Paris in the Bois de Boulogne and adjoining the Jardin d'Acclimatation, was designed by the Canadian-American Pritzker Prize-winning architect Frank Gehry. Twelve large glass sails cover the body of the building, an assembly of white blocks referred to as the "iceberg", giving it its volume, its lightness and its vitality. Placed in a basin specially created for the purpose, the building fits easily into the natural environment, between woods and garden, while at the same time playing with light and mirror effects.

The new Fondation Louis Vuitton,  by  Frank Gehry, is located next to the Jardin d'Acclimatation in the Bois de Boulogne, the famous park on the west side of Paris. With an area of 846 hectares, the Bois de Boulogne has 28 km of bridle-paths and 15 km of cycle-paths, as well as containing well-known waterfalls and numerous lakes, streams and ponds that have been the delight of many Parisians since the mid 19th century.  

Under the encouragement of Baron Haussmann, the Prefect of Paris, and of the Emperor Napoleon III, the engineer Alphand and the landscape gardener Barillet-Deschamps designed this great oasis of greenery from 1853 onwards, taking their inspiration from Hyde Park in London.  

I dream of designing, in Paris, a magnificent vessel symbolising the cultural calling of France.

Frank Gehry

The building designed by Frank Gehry brings together the full range of the architect's methods, aesthetic codes and modes of expression, while representing a new stage in his work. He revolutionises the use of glass to give life to his vision of a building that is light, luminous and in motion, designed to merge harmoniously with a late 19th century park and to house exceptional works of art.

Moving away from  the conventional approach to glass surfaces, he has developed a revolutionary way of fashioning this material that makes it possible to curve, in an individualised way and to the nearest millimetre, each of the 3,600 panes in the twelve glass sails that give the structure its volume.

This great architectural exploit has already taken its place among the iconic works of 21st century architecture. Frank Gehry's building, which reveals forms never previously imagined until today, will be the reflection of the unique, creative and innovative project that is the Fondation Louis Vuitton.

The construction of the Fondation Louis Vuitton is accompanied by a landscape project that will allow for the transformation and modernisation of the Jardin d'Acclimatation while at the same time conserving its original atmosphere. Walks have been re-designed, architectural features have been renovated and a range of plant varieties have been re-established so as to renew the park's plant and historical heritage. 

The construction of the Fondation Louis Vuitton was completed on December 2013. The completion of finishings inside the building and the landscaping of the approaches to the Fondation building will be this Spring 2014 and the opening to the public on Autumn 2014.

The Fondation.- Created through Bernard Arnault's initiative by the LVMH Group and its brands in 2006, the Fondation Louis Vuitton has as its vocation the inauguration of a new stage in the patronage of art and culture developed by the Group since 1990. Its ambition is to encourage and promote artistic creation both in France and internationally.

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Gehry Partners, LLP. The Gehry Partners team on the Battersea project is headed by Craig Webb and Brian Aamoth. Gehry Partners, LLP is a full service architectural firm with extensive international experience in the design and construction of academic, museum, theater, performance, commercial, and master planning projects.

Founded in 1962 and located in Los Angeles, California, Gehry Partners currently has a staff of approximately 125 people. Every project undertaken by Gehry Partners has Frank Gehry personally involved. Frank is supported by the broad resources of the firm and the extensive experience of the firm’s senior partners and staff. On Battersea, the design team will be led by Craig Webb who has collaborated with Frank for over 20 years. Current projects include: Guggenheim Abu Dhabi; LUMA Foundation in Arles, France; Divan Orchestra in Berlin; Eisenhower Memorial in Washington, D.C.; King Street Development in Toronto, Ontario; Philadelphia Museum of Art in Philadelphia; Q-MOCA in Quanzhou, China; and West Campus for Facebook in Menlo Park, California. Projects under construction include the Puente de Vida Museum of Biodiversity in Panama; Foundation Louis Vuitton Museum in Paris, France and the Dr. Chau Chak Wing Building for the University of Technology, Sydney, Australia.

Raised in Toronto, Canada, Frank Gehry moved with his family to Los Angeles in 1947. He received his Bachelor of Architecture degree from USC in 1954, and studied city planning at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. He founded Gehry Partners, LLP, in Los Angeles in 1962, a full-service architectural firm that developed extensive international experience in the design and construction of academic, museum, theater, performance and commercial projects.

Hallmarks of Mr. Gehry’s work include a concern that people dwell comfortably within the spaces that he creates, and an insistence that his buildings address the context and culture of their sites.

Despite his international stature and renown, he continues to be closely associated with Los Angeles, where his 1978 redesign of his Santa Monica home launched his international career.

“Frank holds a special place in his art for the work of contemporary artists. He was a central figure in the contemporary art world in Los Angeles in the 1960s and 70s, working closely with Billy Al Bengston, Larry Bell, John Altoon, Bob Irwin, Ed Moses, Ed Ruscha and Ken Price. And he continues to work closely with artists, including Claes Oldenburg and Jeff Koons, for whom he has collaborated on deeply sensitive installations of their work,” said Cuno. “Given his contributions to architecture, and the Getty’s extensive research and collections in Los Angeles art and architecture at the mid-century and beyond, and the commitment of the Getty Conservation Institute, the Getty Foundation, and the Getty Research Institute to the conservation and study of modern architecture, it is fitting that we present Frank with our highest honor.”

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Frank Owen Gehry, was born in 1929 in Toronto (Canada), but adopted American nationality after moving to Los Angeles in 1947 with his parents. He graduated in Architecture in 1954 from the University of Baja California and began working in the studio of Victor Gruen. After completing his military service, he studied Urban Planning at Harvard and returned to Gruen’s office. He moved to Paris in 1961 with his wife and two daughters, where he worked for a year with André Rémondet. In 1962, he opened his own studio –Frank O. Gehry and Associates– in Los Angeles, from which he has worked on projects in America, Europe and Asia for five decades now.

He rose to prominence in the 70s for his buildings with sculptural forms that combine unusual industrial materials such as titanium and glass. During this same period, he began to develop a role as a designer of furniture with his Easy Edges collection, conceived as a low-cost range comprising fourteen pieces made out of cardboard, subsequently followed by the more artistic range, Experimental Edges. Since the late 80s, the name of Frank Gehry has been associated with the deconstructionist movement, characterized by fragmentation and the rupture of a linear design process, resulting in buildings with a striking visual appearance. The Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao (1997) and the Nationale-Nederlanden building in Prague (1996), known as the Dancing House, may be considered among the most prominent examples of this formal language. Likewise noteworthy among his works are the Aerospace Museum of California (1984), the Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhein, Germany (1989), the Frederick Weisman Art Museum in Minneapolis (1993), the DZ Bank building in Berlin (1998), the Gehry Tower in Hannover (2001), the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Stata Center in Cambridge (2003), the Walt Disney Concert Hall (2003) and the Maggie's Centre in Dundee, Scotland (2003). Gehry has also worked on a museum of contemporary art in Paris for the Louis Vuitton Foundation, the design of his first playground in New York, at the southern tip of the island of Manhattan known as The Battery, and the remodelling and recovery of Mayer Park in Lisbon, which included the restoration of the Capitolio Theatre. In Spain, 2006 saw the opening of the Herederos del Marqués de Riscal winery in Elciego (Álava), and he has also designed the Sagrera Tower in Barcelona.

His work has been the subject of numerous case studies and, in 2006, the film director Sydney Pollack released the documentary Sketches of Frank Gehry, presented at Cannes. In that same year, he presented his project for the new Guggenheim Museum in Abu Dhabi. In 2008, he designed the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion in Hyde Park, London. The first residential building in Asia designed by Gehry, the Opus Hong Kong tower, was opened in 2012. He is currently working on the design of the Eisenhower Memorial to be built in Washington; on the West Campus that Facebook is to build in Menlo Park, California and on the project of a residential tower in Berlin, which will become the tallest skyscraper in the city.

His designs have received over one hundred awards around the world. Noteworthy among the distinctions he has received are more than a dozen honorary degrees, the Arnold W. Brunner Memorial Prize (USA, 1977), the Pritzker Prize (1989), the Wolf Prize in Arts (Israel, 1992), the Praemium Imperiale (Japan, 1992), the Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize (1994), the Friedrich Kiesler Prize (Austria, 1998), and the Twenty Five Year Award from the American Institute of Architects (2012). He also holds the National Medal of Arts (USA, 1998), the Lotos Medal of Merit (USA, 1999), the Gold Medal of the American Institute of Architects (1999), and the Royal Gold Medal for the promotion of architecture (2000), awarded by the Queen of England. Gehry has been a member of the Pritzker Prize Jury and of institutions such as the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the US National Design Academy and the Royal Academy of Arts.

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Published on: May 9, 2014
Cite: "The new Foundation Louis Vuitton by Frank Gehry rises in Paris" METALOCUS. Accessed
<https://www.metalocus.es/en/news/new-foundation-louis-vuitton-frank-gehry-rises-paris> ISSN 1139-6415
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