The Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain by Jean Nouvel: 2, place du Palais-Royal, Paris
Jean Nouvel
In October 2025, the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contempo rain will inaugurate its new exhibition spaces in the heart of Paris, 2, place du Palais-Royal. This huge historic building was built next to the Louvre in 1854 on the initiative of Napoleon III to welcome visitors to the 1855 Paris Universal Exhibition. It underwent many changes over the 19th and 20th centuries. Initially named the “Grand Hôtel du Louvre” (1855-1880), it later became the “Grands Magasins du Louvre” (1880-1978) and then the “Louvre des Antiquaires” (1978-2019). For the Fondation Cartier, Jean Nouvel completely reshaped and re habilitated the building’s interior spaces to offer a modular architectural machine to the service of artistic creativity.
After almost five years of work, the Fondation Cartier reveals Jean Nouvel’s architectural project in a lavishly illustrated book. Featuring numerous photographs of the exterior and interior spaces, it traces the building’s unique history and explores the technical specificities of Jean Nouvel’s architectural device. The major projects that have marked the architect’s career are also discussed, including those designed for the Fondation Cartier and for other exhibition venues in France and around the world.
This book highlights a highly ambitious architectural project, the outcome of almost forty years of exchanges and dialogues between the Fondation Cartier and Jean Nouvel.
Born in 1945, Jean Nouvel is an internationally renowned architect. His contextual approach and ability to infuse a genuine uniqueness into all the projects he undertakes have consistently yielded buildings that transform their environments and indelibly mark the cities in which they are built. His works have gained world-wide recognition through numerous prestigious French and International prizes and rewards: the Aga-Khan Prize (1989); the Lion d’Or of the Venice Biennale (2000); the Royal Gold Medal of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), the Praemium Imperial of Japan’s Fine Arts Association, and the Borromini Prize (2001); the Pritzker Prize (2008).
Béatrice Grenier is a Paris-based curator, writer and editor. She is currently the Director of Strategic Projects at the Fondation Cartier where she is curating an exhibition on the architecture of Jean Nouvel as part of the collateral program of the XIX Venice Architecture Biennale. Béatrice Grenier is a regular contributor to contemporary art and architecture publications such as Domus, Pin-Up and the Journal of Curatorial Studies.
Beatriz Colomina is an architectural historian and theorist. She is the Howard Crosby Butler Professor of Architecture and the Founding Director of the interdisciplinary Media and Modernity Program at Princeton University. The KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm made her Doctor Honoris Causa. In 2020 she was awarded the Ada Louise Huxtable Prize for her contributions to the field of architecture. In 2022 she was inducted as member of the Royal Academy of Doctors of Spain, and in 2024 she received an Architecture Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in New York.
Antoine Picon is an architect, historian of architecture, cities and technology, and professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. He has published numerous articles and books on the history of engineers, utopias, architecture, and the city. His research focuses the relationship between the production of space and scientific and technical developments. More recently, he has taken an interest in the impact of the digital revolution on architecture and the city, and in the interactions between cities, nature, and technology.
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