The man behind the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Canadian-American master of “deconstructivism” Frank Gehry imagined the Fondation Louis Vuitton like a submerged iceberg made of steel and wood, a building floating on water. On water? Yes, the waters of childhoods gone by have been a recurring theme at the Fondation Louis Vuitton since October 20th. That’s because the building has laid anchor just stone’s throw away from the Jardin d’Acclimation. Mooring in the western side of Paris, like a strange vessel from another land, the structure has gotten tongues wagging ever since its opening. Its supernatural dimensions are at least partly to blame. The edifice shoots up more than 40 meters high to support 13,500 m2 of glass enclosures. At ground level, that adds up to 11,000 m2 of space with 7,000 m2 of exhibits open to the public. The sheer size of it is insane and fantastic in the same breath. No two viewing angles are the same. Twelve giant glass sheaths with varying volumes are used throughout. It took five long years of construction and no less than thirty patents to edify this wonder that, beyond its aesthetics, embraces an environmental and ecological approach.
An “haute couture building” that harbors a jarring collection of private art. This is the sort of invitation on a journey that only Vuitton knows the secret to. Bathed in an extraordinary vaporous light, the museum within its unique shell dissimulates contemporary art in all its forms through permanent works, temporary exhibits, and specific orders from the Fondation itself. Eleven galleries and an auditorium lie within this immense caravel draped in tears of glass. Frank Gehry himself said that his museum in Bilbao is a masculine one, while this one is decidedly feminine. Its all curves, undulating, elusive. Majestic and poetic just like the sound work “A=F=L=O=A=T”, a unique piece of art using sound that was created by conceptual artist Cerith Wyn Evans. Composed of twenty transparent glass flutes arranged in an ellipse, each of them plays a note according to a composition that the artist wanted to be the sound transcription of the building itself. Fantastic, spectacular… It’s a fascinating example of the capabilities of the imagination, just like this structure itself that French President François Hollande called “a miracle of intelligence, of creation, and of technology.”
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