The Fondation Cartier’s move to 2 Place du Palais-Royal in the heart of Paris

The Fondation Cartier is moving to the former premises of the Louvre des Antiquaires at 2 Place du Palais-Royal in the center of Paris. It will occupy three levels (-1, ground level, 1st level) of this Haussmannian building reimagined by Jean Nouvel—the second building he designed for the Fondation Cartier, following the Boulevard Raspail edifice inaugurated in 1994.

A major new addition to the urban landscape and cultural scene

With this architectural project bringing extraordinarily innovative features to a historical structure, the Fondation Cartier has become a major actor in the ongoing urban and cultural renewal of the first arrondissement of Paris, which has recently seen the reopening of the Bourse de Commerce, the restoration of La Samaritaine, and the overhaul of the Rue de Rivoli —soon to be rounded out by the transformation of the East-West axis along the Seine, and the opening of the Louvre onto Paris through new entrances on the Seine and Rivoli sides.

It is also enhancing a unique cultural offer on the global landscape, just next to the Musée du Louvre, the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, and the Comédie Française, and not far from the Bourse de Commerce – Pinault Collection, the Musée de l’Orangerie, the Jeu de Paume, the Opéra Garnier, and the Musée d’Orsay.

A new building conceived by Jean Nouvel: A contextual architecture

As with each of his architectural projects, the two buildings designed by Jean Nouvel for the Fondation Cartier are the fruits of his contextual approach. The second project in the heart of the Palais-Royal district embodies his conception of the exhibition site and its implantation in the city. The large bay windows all along the ground level of the Rue Saint-Honoré and Rue de Rivoli facades offer fresh perspectives of the city through the building, sparking an immediate dialogue with Paris.

The arcades, designed by the architects Charles Percier and Pierre Fontaine under Napoleon I, root the building in the district’s architectural harmony. At the same time, the eminently innovative interior architecture revives the modernity of this site, which it so brilliantly exemplified in its day. At 2 Place du Palais-Royal, what was then known as the Grand Hôtel du Louvre was Paris’s first luxury hotel. It opened in 1855 and subsequently transformed into the Grand Magasins du Louvre—two of the era’s most innovative establishments.

Rethinking exhibitions in the 21st Century The building at 2 Place du Palais-Royal is part of the history of both the Louvre Palais-Royal district and of the Universal Exhibitions, having been constructed for the 1855 Paris Exposition and as part of Napoleon III’s urban redevelopment initiative. The Louvre Palais-Royal district, in its political and cultural dimensions, was formed around the representation of power and stage effects.

The Universal Exhibitions also introduced new forms of display in a period marked by the invention of photography and cinema, upending the relationship between medium and representation and sparking aesthetic modernity. These events reinvented an aesthetic relationship to the artistic and industrial creation of their day. Radically transforming forms of exhibiting, showing, and viewing, they offered an alternative model to museums. 

Now, 170 years later, this building, originally constructed to welcome visitors to the 1855 Paris Exposition, is strikingly avant-garde once more, shaking up the display conditions and viewing paradigms traditionally characterizing museums. Jean Nouvel’s architectural project allows for an extraordinary renewal of exhibition possibilities, formats, and techniques. Set within the Haussmannian structure, his design makes use of unprecedented technology, comprising five mobile platforms that can modify the surface area and circuits within the building, creating an immense stage for contemporary art.

The Fondation Cartier’s move to Place du Palais-Royal redefines exhibition spaces with Jean Nouvel’s innovative design, which combines modular architecture and urban interaction. Explore advanced architectural concepts with PAACADEMY workshops designed to inspire creativity and innovation.

Artistic freedom: The Fondation Cartier’s founding principle

Jean Nouvel’s building for the Fondation Cartier on Boulevard Raspail already allowed for innovative exhibition design. The structure of sliding glass panels, a technical feat, helped blur the ground floor boundaries between the garden and the city. Sparking wholly novel forms of display, this space has led artists to play with the porous relationship between inside and outside, with immediate proximity to the garden and the city. 

Powerful and remarkably modular, with extensive interplay between transparency and opacity, the Fondation Cartier’s new building invites artists to broaden the limits of their imagination to create altogether innovative exhibitions with works that go well beyond the ordinary. 

The Fondation Cartier at the Palais-Royal, in short:

• 8,500 square meters accessible to the public: 6,500 square meters of exhibition surface area, including 1,200 square meters of mobile platforms modifying the exhibition areas and circuits within the building, allowing for vertical spaces up to 11 meters high
• 1,200 square meters of walkways overlooking a volume of 13,300 square meters
• A 150-meter-long “Crossing” from the Place du Palais Royal to Rue Marengo
• Five motorized recycled steel mobile platforms, distributed lengthwise, operated via a system of pulleys and cables, which can be placed in 11 different vertical positions, from -1 to the ceiling
• An array of possible configurations and perspectives, depending on the arrangement of the platforms in the space (total or partial alignment, variable geometries)
• Three walkways along the “Crossing,” on different levels, potentially connected to the platforms depending on the exhibition design
• Three large glass roofs with a view of the green roof
• Bay windows stretching along the full 150 meters of the Rue de Rivoli and Rue Saint-Honoré facades
• Shade systems for the picture windows and shutters for the ceilings, allowing for full modulation of natural light all the way to complete darkness
• The preservation of 19th century architecture elements (the facade and interior of the Palais-Royal courtyard, the outer facade of the building, and the exterior arcades)
• Contemporary materials: recycled steel for the platforms, concrete for the floors
• A 300-square-meter educational center on the 1st floor
• An auditorium with a seating capacity of 120
• A book store
• A restaurant

Jean Nouvel on the Fondation Cartier’s new building:

 “The Fondation Cartier is a place for experimentation and discovery. Its identity will be remarkably expressed in this historic district. It may very well be the missing piece of this urban composition, encompassing strategic administrative, cultural, and political sites around the Place du Palais-Royal. Most of these edifices were built over different eras, each contributing to the urban landscape—creating, enhancing, contrasting. I believe that such Parisian sites today have the mission of inventing spaces and new ways of doing that are compatible with history and which help reveal its traces. In this sense, I don’t think that the Rue de Rivoli is systematically destined to house a series of shops beneath its arcades. Changing this building’s mission is an effort to make it more generous with Paris and more representative of Paris. The Fondation Cartier is, in a way, deepening the site. In a dual movement, history is being introduced into the heart of the Fondation Cartier, and artistic production, into the heart of the city.”

“The space of the Fondation Cartier surpasses that of its new building alone to encompass the Palais-Royal district itself. On the ground level, the glass facades overlooking the Rue de Rivoli and Rue Saint-Honoré allow the gaze to cross the space from one street to the other, with the inside and outside intermingling. The transparency of the side picture windows solidifies this sense of belonging to the heart of Paris, as do the zenithal glass roofs atop which trees rise. The gaze meets the sky over Paris and this floating forest, which seems to root the Fondation Cartier even more strongly in the historical cityscape. The interior of the Haussmannian building, which has been emptied along its entire length, provides a 150-meter-long view all the way to the Rue Marengo. The project was an effort to reveal the building’s emptiness, depth, and height. It is important to understand, in keeping with transformations in architectural practice over time, that it is not a question of building a space but of building in space. This emptiness is the site of expression, the basis of all possibilities.”

 “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 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 and courage that artists might not necessarily demonstrate in other institutional settings. Like the Greeks, I’ve always thought of museums as ideal spaces for expressing ideas, talking, being both there and elsewhere, inside and outside, in the city, and more. I try to bring this possibility to each of my projects of this type. Architecture attests to an era in time. What matters is the collision and the way of discovering what is directly related to history. At the Boulevard Raspail site, what was likely hard to understand in the beginning was the importance of the “all but nothing:” how architectural elements adapt without appearing to, the seasonal light variations depending on foliage cover, rain and more. It is a building of great nuance. At the Palais-Royal site, this interplay of perpetual variations occurs inside the building.” 

“Within this architecture, of which only the typically 19th-century facade and a handful of structural elements have been preserved, an industrial cathedral of rare mass and immense scope is found. It exudes a strong expression of power. Its five steel platforms, with visible elements of their mobility, wholly contrast with the external Hausmannian architecture. It’s something of a super-theatre, with the heavy flooring lifted. This innovation isn’t simply functional or aesthetic; for me, it is architectural in the sense of becoming dynamic. The innovation lies in being able to access all different elevations and all different variations in lighting, all the way to complete darkness, through the shades on the glass roofs and picture windows.”

“The Fondation Cartier will likely be the institution offering the greatest differentiation of its spaces, the most diverse exhibition forms and viewpoints. The powerful platforms can hold extremely heavy works and display them in entirely novel ways. Here, it is possible to do what cannot be done elsewhere by shifting the system of the act of showing. This might lead to highly distinctive exhibitions, depending on what the artists, curators, and exhibition designers dream up. It’s a site that allows for nearly infinite possibilities, with spaces that can be stretched to great heights and depths or extremely compressed. Depending on the chosen configuration, these “capable” spaces of variable geometry will be unveiled over the course of different projects. This movement is what should really stand out—the fact that this shape-shifting form, visible from the Rue de Rivoli and Rue Saint-Honoré, is perpetually surprising. The Fondation Cartier is creating a territory for art, which can be crossed from the inside or outside, in an ongoing interplay of osmosis and collision.”

– Jean Nouvel, architect

The project description is provided by Fondation Cartier.