An Architecture of Assemblies
On arrival at the Grand Palais in Paris, the contrast is immediate. Beneath the glass canopy of the Salon d’Honneur, a sweeping, pink, textile structure cuts across the historic setting with the ease of something entirely new. This is Fun Palace — an architectural and curatorial experiment designed by Studio Ossidiana and staged by the Centre Pompidou during its five-year closure. Named after Cedric Price’s legendary unbuilt project, the interactive installation rethinks how we gather, how we share space, and how collective life can be shaped by design.
Jean-Max Colard, Head of Programming at the Centre Pompidou, frames the event in both spatial and political terms: ‘We have this idea to explore a new form of assembly. It’s the pleasure of gathering, but also how we speak, how we come together in a space.’ The ten-day program at the Grand Palais, he explains, becomes a living laboratory, where each day is imagined as a room in an evolving architecture of thought, action, and intimacy.
The decision to invoke Cedric Price was not incidental. The original Fun Palace, imagined in the 1960s, proposed an adaptable cultural complex shaped by users, not hierarchies. Though never built, its ideas remain foundational, particularly for institutions like the Centre Pompidou. ‘Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers studied Cedric Price,’ says Colard. ‘This is a way of relaunching that utopian project.’
Studio Ossidiana transforms the Grand Palais into a soft, inhabitable structure | image © Centre Pompidou
soft palace: a textile landscape for collective life
Studio Ossidiana’s contribution for the Centre Pompidou installation, titled The Soft Palace, acts as both landscape and stage. It folds and spills across the floor of the Grand Palais like a garment, offering shelter, invitation, and unpredictability. Made of layered pink felt, the installation encourages barefoot wandering, reclining, and spontaneous use. Its informality is deliberate.
‘It became a sort of encampment,’ say Alessandra Covini and Giovanni Bellotti of Rotterdam-based, Italian practice Studio Ossidiana. ‘The temporary home of the Centre Pompidou while it’s being renovated. Because of time and labor constraints, all the elements are made of rolls. These can extend to accommodate changing programs.’ Visitors drift between talks and performances, often lingering in the folds of the structure itself, part of its spatial choreography.
The soft materiality is central. ‘We imagined a place where you could play, listen, discuss, or find a moment of privacy a few steps from a crowd,’ the studio adds. ‘We hope every visitor becomes both actor and spectator in the choreography of its daily life.’
The Soft Palace invites barefoot exploration where visitors can recline and gather | image © Centre Pompidou
virtually explore the grand palais with ‘nightcrawlers’ game
Elsewhere in the Grand Palais, another form of architecture unfolds — this time virtual. Nightcrawlers, a video game by artist Alice Bucknell, maps the building through the sensory logics of bats and flowers. ‘It’s a pollination simulator,’ Bucknell explains. ‘You’re either the bat or the flower, navigating underground root networks or flying through the halls. You collect charms using echolocation or electric pulses. Each one makes a sound. You and your partner play them back to each other like a musical score.’
The game is multiplayer and cooperative by design. ‘You can’t play alone,’ Bucknell says. ‘It’s about becoming attuned to someone else, without words. Pollination becomes a kind of duet.’ As players succeed in these musical exchanges, the architecture changes. French formal gardens slowly give way to wild, overgrown ecologies. ‘The more you cooperate, the more the palace transforms.‘
Formafantasma and Fernando Laposse contribute works that reframe relationships between material and society | image © Centre Pompidou
Amid these interactive works is a more meditative zone: a small, focused presentation of design pieces from the Centre Pompidou’s collection, curated by Olivier Zeitoun. These recent acquisitions underscore design’s capacity to assemble both materials and people. ‘We called it The Assembly of Objects,’ Zeitoun notes. ‘Each project here is the result of a collective process, either in how it was made or what it represents.’
Among them is FormaFantasma’s Cambio, which interrogates the timber industry through material storytelling, Fernando Laposse’s Corn Kumiko Cabinet, and Mash.T Deign Studio‘s Hlabisa Bench, a tribute to Zulu craftsmanship. Also on view are works by ibiyanε, whose poetic forms draw on diasporic memory and shared experience. ‘These objects are sensitive to ecology, memory, and postcolonial narratives,’ says Zeitoun. ‘Design becomes a tool for connection, for transmission.’
While the project is inspired by Cedric Price’s Fun Palace, this version is more tactile, more embodied. You sit in it. You nap in it. You echolocate in it. You play. Its strength lies in what it offers without prescription, It is an open architecture shaped by those who use it. ‘Cities aren’t born in beautiful solitude,’ says Alessandra Covini. ‘They emerge from conflict, negotiation, the mess of being together.’
Olivier Zeitoun curates a design assembly that functions as a tool of connection and knowledge transmission | image © designboom
Jean-Max Colard sees Fun Palace as an experiment in how we share space | image © designboom
with the two-player game, players explore a virtual Grand Palais | image © Centre Pompidou
Fun Palace builds on Cedric Price’s legendary unrealized vision | image © designboom
Studio Ossidiana | image © designboom
project info:
exhibition title: Fun Palace
location: Grand Palais | @le_grand_palais
on view: June 6th — 15th, 2025
host: Centre Pompidou | @centrepompidou
installation design: Studio Ossidiana | @studio_ossidiana
video game designer: Alice Bucknell | @alicebucknell
curators: Jean-Max Colard, Joséphine Huppert, Alice Pialoux, assisted by Daphné Carreras,
curators of The Assembly of Objects: Olivier Zeitoun, in collaboration with Iris Carton Eldin
head of design and industrial prospective: Marie-Ange Brayer
collection attachée, design department: Mathilde Vallée
production manager: Barbara Kugler
sceneographer: Celine Coffin
space manager: Charlotte Cochelin
artworks manager: Nina Genonceau
audiovisual management: Alexandre Lebugle,
stage management: François Pegalajar, Robin Vieville, Fabrice Pleynet
producer of The Soft Palace: Arguzia
interpreters: Marguerite Capelle, Caroline Ferrard, Adèle Hattemer, Yves Tixier
partnership coordination: Anaïs Izard, Camille Gorret
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