jean nouvel’s fondation cartier reopens in paris with formafantasma-designed exhibition

Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain reopens in paris

The Fondation Cartier pour l’Art Contemporain’s new building, designed by Jean Nouvel, opens on October 25th, 2025, at 2 Place du Palais-Royal, Paris. The architectural project for the institution reinvents the 19th-century Grands Magasins du Louvre as a mobile organism. Exposition Générale, the inaugural exhibition, designed by Formafantasma, brings together over 600 works by more than 100 artists, including David Lynch, Claudia Andujar, Sarah Sze, Cai Guo-Qiang, Junya Ishigami, Giuseppe Penone, and Diller Scofidio + Renfro to map forty years of contemporary creation through a scenography that reactivates the very notion of what a museum can be.

Jean Nouvel’s architectural transformation of the Fondation Cartier’s new home reimagines a 19th-century Haussmannian landmark as a kinetic machine for art. Within the restored shell of the former Grands Magasins du Louvre, Nouvel introduces a system of five monumental moving platforms that rise and descend to endlessly reshape the exhibition spaces.

La Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, 2 place du Palais-Royal, Paris. © Jean Nouvel / ADAGP, Paris, 2025 | all images © Martin Argyroglo, unless stated otherwise

Inside Jean Nouvel’s Transformative Design

Inside the historic Haussmannian shell, French architect Jean Nouvel strips the structure back to its core, carving out vast, transparent voids where light and movement orchestrate the experience. Five monumental steel platforms, each a stage of 250 square meters and 250 tons, rise and fall on command, suspended by a cable-and-pulley system engineered in collaboration with specialists in bridge and theater design. These movable floors allow for infinite reconfigurations, forming an ever-changing topography of spaces that can expand, contract, or vanish entirely. ‘Everything must be removed,’ Nouvel had insisted early in the process, ‘so that the gaze can pass through an unobstructed space.’

The building behaves like a vast mechanical organism. Skylights become luminous floors, shutters slide like theatrical curtains to modulate daylight, and the distinction between inside and outside dissolves. Along the Saint-Honoré facade, a 150-meter-long glass canopy connects Rue de Rivoli to the Palais-Royal, creating a sheltered pedestrian route. With its seven-meter-high windows and fluid circulation, the architecture transforms the site into a transparent urban stage, an ‘exhibition machine’ where Paris itself becomes part of the display.

the Fondation Cartier pour l’Art Contemporain’s new building opens on October 25th, 2025

formafantasma designs scenography for inaugural exhibition

Nouvel’s design deliberately dialogues with the building’s layered past. Constructed in 1855 for the first Paris World Fair, the former Grands Magasins du Louvre once hosted Expositions Générales, grand showcases of industrial modernity. The Fondation Cartier’s inaugural exhibition revives that spirit of discovery. Curated around four thematic constellations, Machines d’architecture, Être nature, Making Things, and Un monde réel, the show brings together nearly 600 works by over 100 artists from the Fondation’s collection, including David Lynch, Patti Smith, James Turrell, Claudia Andujar, Junya Ishigami, Sarah Sze, Cai Guo-Qiang, and Diller Scofidio + Renfro.

For this ambitious reopening, the scenography by Formafantasma extends Nouvel’s architectural concept into a curatorial experiment that draws on the display systems of 19th-century trade fairs, the design collective reimagines the exhibition as a social and experimental field. Materials, lighting, and spatial rhythms evoke the heritage of the site while foregrounding the performative dimension of showing and seeing. Formafantasma positions artworks within a network of exchange between disciplines, eras, and worldviews.

reinventing the 19th-century Grands Magasins du Louvre as a mobile organism

four sections compose the Exposition Générale show

The sections of Exposition Générale unfold within the mechanical flexibility of Nouvel’s architecture. Machines d’architecture turns the first platform into an urban laboratory, where visionary designs and utopian models, from Alessandro Mendini’s miniature cathedral to Freddy Mamani’s vivid Salón de eventos, reimagine the city as a site of transformation. Être nature shifts focus to the living world, transforming interior space into a sensorial ecosystem where Solange Pessoa’s feathered installation hovers above works by Claudia Andujar, Giuseppe Penone, and Bernie Krause. Making Things traces the fluid boundaries between craft, design, and fine art, while Un monde réel explores intersections of science, technology, and fiction through immersive works such as Sarah Sze’s Tracing Falling Sky and Diller Scofidio + Renfro’s data-driven EXIT.

Jean Nouvel reimagines a 19th-century Haussmannian landmark as a kinetic machine for art

transparent voids where light and movement orchestrate the experience

a system of five monumental moving platforms rise and descend to reshape the exhibition spaces

the Studio Marie-Claude Beaud

works by Chaco Artists, Nikau Hindin | image © Marc Domage

works by Bruno Novelli, Luiz Zerbini, Chaco artists, Nikau Hindin and Junya Ishigami | image © Marc Domage

David Hammons facing Le Louvre | image © Marc Domage

Freddy Mamani, Salón de eventos, 2018 | image © Marc Domage

works by Junya Ishigami and Luiz Zerbini | image © Marc Domage

Andrea Branzi, Gazebo, 2008 | image © Cyril Marcilhacy

works by Ron Mueck, Solange Pessoa and Olga de Amaral | image © Cyril Marcilhacy

project info:

name: Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain new headquarters

architect: Jean Nouvel | @ateliersjeannouvel

location: 2 Place du Palais-Royal, Paris, France

gross floor area: approx. 14,000 square meters

inaugural exhibition: Exposition Générale

scenography for inaugural exhibition: Formafantasma | @formafantasma

client: Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain | @fondationcartier

artists featured: David Lynch, Patti Smith, Joan Mitchell, Claudia Andujar, Sarah Sze, Cai Guo-Qiang, Junya Ishigami, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Agnès Varda, Giuseppe Penone, Solange Pessoa, James Turrell, Alessandro Mendini, Freddy Mamani, Bernie Krause, Francesca Woodman, among others

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