LOUIS VUITTON FOUNDATION

Manchester architects, Liverpool architects, Cheshire architects and others around the UK are sure to be interested by the building of the Louis Vuitton Foundation, which is an art museum and cultural center sponsored by the group LVMH and its subsidiaries. It is run as a legally separate, nonprofit entity as part of LVMH’s promotion of art and culture. The museum was opened in October 2014. The building was designed by the architect Frank Gehry, and is adjacent to the Jardin d’Acclimatation in the Bois de Boulogne of the 16th arrondissement of Paris.

For the history:

In 2001, Bernard Arnault, the Chairman of LVMH, met Frank Gehry, and told him of plans for a new building for the Louis Vuitton Foundation for Creation on the edge of the Bois de Boulogne. The building project was first presented in 2006, with costs estimated at around €100 million and plans to open in late 2009 or early 2010. Suzanne Pagé, then director of the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, was named the foundation’s artistic director in charge of developing the museum’s program.

The city of Paris which owns the park granted a building permit in 2007. In 2011, an association for the safeguard of the Bois de Boulogne won a court battle, as the judge ruled the centre had been built too close to a tiny asphalt road deemed a public right of way. Opponents to the site had also complained that a new building would disrupt the verdant peace of the historic park. Renowned French architect Jean Nouvel backed Gehry and said of the objectors: “With their little tight-fitting suits, they want to put Paris in formalin. It’s quite pathetic.”

Eventually a special law was passed by the Assemblée Nationale that the Fondation was in the national interest and “a major work of art for the whole world,” which allowed it to proceed.