Jean Nouvel’s recycled-wood makeover of a 19th-century landmark opens 25 Oct 2025, unveiling 6,500 m² of mutable galleries and 100-artist “Exposition Générale.”
Move over, Boulevard Raspail: the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain is packing its Bauhaus-by-Nouvel glass box and decamping to an 1855 Haussmannian grand hôtel reborn as a radical, recyclable art engine on Place du Palais-Royal.
Mark your calendars — 25 October 2025 is the day Paris gets its newest cultural thrill ride. Here’s the cheat sheet.
Circular DNA: façades fashioned from re-harvested Parisian timbers echo Rolex-bezel fluting; terrazzo floors sparkle with recycled Cotisso glass.
8,500 m² total / 6,500 m² show space – five mobile platforms glide across 1,200 m², stacking up to 11 m high. Today: video tower. Tomorrow: jungle canopy.
Bay-window voyeurism: floor-to-ceiling panes frame triple postcard views — Rue de Rivoli, Faubourg Saint-Honoré, and the Palais-Royal gardens.
Light alchemy: a Murano-blown ceiling shifts hue from dawn peach to dusk indigo, scripting ambience without a single LED gimmick.
“Here, you can do what cannot be done elsewhere — shift the very act of showing,” Nouvel teases.
Nearly 600 works, 100+ artists spanning 1984-2025 — from Brazilian neo-tropicals to AI bio-lab installations.
Solo capsules (think: Sarah Sze vortex room, David Lynch midnight drawings) orbit thematic clusters on climate, code, and living systems.
Flashback vitrines mine Cartier’s archive of cross-disciplinary pairings: Ron Mueck’s supersized nudes dialogue with cactus studies by Ai Weiwei.
Vertical surprise: at least one platform will hoist a 10-meter Nairy Baghramian sculpture into the skylight like an industrial chandelier.
Until 14 September 2025, La Biennale di Venezia hosts Fondation Cartier by Jean Nouvel on San Giorgio Maggiore. Scale models, VR fly-throughs, and a jewel-box engraving of the current Raspail HQ let you preview Nouvel’s “open-ended monument” before it lands in Paris.
In 2026, the Living Systems Lab will launch a residency for eco-biologists. Expect exhibitions with petri-dish paintings and algae façades that explore the intersection of living systems and art.
By 2027, landscape architect Bas Smets will complete the vegetal forecourt. This green corridor will allow visitors to stroll seamlessly from the Louvre to Cartier under a micro-forest canopy.
In 2028, the Fondation’s mobile platforms will go public-programmable via app, letting visitors curate and activate their own one-day pop-up exhibitions on-site.
With its movable floors, recyclable elegance, and a bold programmatic future, Fondation Cartier 2025 blends the permanence of architecture with the dynamism of contemporary art.
More than a museum move, it’s a statement of creative intent: a space designed not just to show art, but to let it breathe, evolve, and take risks. In a city synonymous with tradition, Nouvel and Cartier are offering a new kind of legacy—one rooted in light, openness, and artistic reinvention.
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