The bucolic backdrop of the recently opened Fondation Louis Vuitton, set within Paris’s Bois de Boulogne park, inspired a garden building in the tradition of Joseph Paxton’s long-destroyed Crystal Palace. Like that famous structure, erected in London’s Hyde Park in 1851, Frank Gehry’s billowing new museum features vast expanses of glass.
Originally conceived as a venue for lectures and films, the room’s program morphed over the course of the project. The auditorium opens up to two adjacent galleries, setting the stage for fashion shows. (Luxury brand LVMH Mo't Hennessy-Louis Vuitton, headed by CEO Bernard Arnault, held its first Louis Vuitton show there during Paris Fashion Week in October.) “Later on, the ambition to perform chamber music and solo recitals in the room came along,” says Craig Webb, design partner at Gehry Partners. “At that point, it became much more challenging acoustically.”
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