Jean-Francois Bodin is probably the most talented architect you have never heard of.

He avoids publicity. His website is “in formation” though he opened his firm, Bodin and Associates, in 1983. He is modest to a fault. His spartan offices are located, with no sign, off of a nondescript 17th-century courtyard in the Marais section of Paris. He works around the corner from the neighborhood where he was born, grew up, and just spent the last five years reconfiguring the Musée Picasso, a quiet triumph of a project.

The tall, ruggedly handsome 67-year-old could be the star of a Clint Eastwood movie; he is craggy, bearded, chain-smoking, taciturn, and observant. He is a good listener, which may explain how he has worked so successfully for decades with such outsized personalities as Pierre Bergé, Yves Saint Laurent, Karl Lagerfeld, and Thierry Mugler. He has designed several museums, including the Musée Matisse in Nice, the CAPC contemporary art museum in Bordeaux, and the Musée d'Art Moderne in Paris. He has also created grand, minimalist art galleries for Yvon Lambert and Gagosian, as well as showrooms for Azzedine Alaia, Lacoste, and Issey Miyake.