The Louis Vuitton Foundation is an art center and museum in Paris – opened on October 20, 2014 – supported by the French luxury conglomerate LVMH. The 7,000-square-meter/75,350-square-foot building of the museum was designed by Canadian-born American architect Frank O. Gehry.

The Louis Vuitton Foundation is located in the north part of the Bois de Boulogne, a large 846-hectare park on the west side of Paris; the easiest way to reach the foundation is by a shuttle bus that goes back and forth from Place Charles de Gaulle and the museum every 20 minutes.

Above: the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris, view from Avenue du Mahatma Gandhi, © Gehry Partners, LLP and Frank O. Gehry; photo © Riccardo Bianchini/Inexhibit

Architecture
At first sight from the street, the architecture of the Vuitton Foundation perplexed me; the huge glass-and-timber “sails” that envelop it look like ornamental structures superimposed on the “real” building concealed underneath them, without establishing a functional relationship with it.
Yet, by entering the building and going up to the roof level on top of the museum, I was able to understand Gehry’s design much better and discover that those, apparently useless, gigantic shells cover a series of roof terraces, thus creating a superb sheltered outdoor space where visitors relax, wander around, socialize and get stunning views over the city of Paris and its outskirts.
I can’t say that Gehry’s design convinced me completely, it still looks to me a bit “over the top”, but at the same time, I can neither say that the Vuitton Foundation isn’t an impressive, fascinating piece of architecture.

Fondation Louis Vuitton, views from the east and the west; the building is surrounded by water mirrors on both the east and the west sides; © Gehry Partners, LLP and Frank O. Gehry; photos © Riccardo Bianchini/Inexhibit

A view of the rooftop terrace; © Gehry Partners, LLP and Frank O. Gehry; photos © Riccardo Bianchini/Inexhibit

One of the blocks, clad by white fiber-reinforced concrete tiles, of “the Iceberg”; © Gehry Partners, LLP and Frank O. Gehry; photo © Riccardo Bianchini/Inexhibit

From the galleries – conceived as large white boxes, very functional and well-designed but not particularly expressive from an architectural point of view – It’s hard to perceive the formal and technical complexity of the architecture of the Vuitton Foundation. It is in other spaces such as the main staircase, that the building reveals its real nature; here a dense framework of steel ribs connected by bolted plates creates an impressive, Piranesian space that forms the inner side of one of several irregular blocks, clad externally by thousands of white fiber-reinforced concrete tiles, collectively known as “the iceberg”.

The interior of the main staircase with its steel frame structure; © Gehry Partners, LLP and Frank O. Gehry; photos © Riccardo Bianchini/Inexhibit

The Vuitton Fondation contains 11 galleries with a total exhibition area of 3,850 square meters/41,440 square feet; the visitor facilities – particularly the cafe and the bookshop – are less generously sized, yet they are quite pleasant and well-designed.

Program of events and activities
Although the Fondation Louis Vuitton has a large collection of contemporary art, it doesn’t have a permanent art exhibition; the Foundation organizes instead two main exhibitions a year, usually one of modern and one of contemporary art; at the time of my visit, there was a truly outstanding retrospective on Mark Rothko.
While it doesn’t have a permanent exhibition, the center houses various site-specific art commissions, such as the installation Inside the Horizon by Olafur Elissan, and a small permanent exhibition presenting Gehry’s design and interesting technical details on the building’s construction.

The program of the Vuitton Foundation also includes guided architectural tours, family activities, workshops, concerts, and special events.

The main lobby; © Gehry Partners, LLP and Frank O. Gehry; photo © Riccardo Bianchini/Inexhibit

The galleries are designed as “neutral” spaces suitable for different types of artworks, in this case, a series of paintings by Mark Rothko on the occasion of the great retrospective that the Vuitton Foundation dedicated to the Latvian-born American artist in 2024; © 1998 Kate Rothko Prizel & Christopher Rothko – Adagp, Paris, 2024; photo © Riccardo Bianchini/Inexhibit

Olafur Elisson, Inside the Horizon, 2013 © Olafur Eliasson © Fondation Louis Vuitton; photo © Riccardo Bianchini/Inexhibit

One of the scale models featured in the exhibition on the building’s architecture; © Gehry Partners, LLP and Frank O. Gehry; photo © Riccardo Bianchini/Inexhibit

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Photo Gallery

The main entrance of the Louis Vuitton Foundation on Avenue du Mahatma Gandhi; © Gehry Partners, LLP and Frank O. Gehry; photo © Riccardo Bianchini/Inexhibit

The “sails” that envelop the building are made of steel, timber, and curved glass panels; © Gehry Partners, LLP and Frank O. Gehry; photo © Riccardo Bianchini/Inexhibit

On the building’s top, the sails cover a sequence of panoramic terraces; © Gehry Partners, LLP and Frank O. Gehry; photos © Riccardo Bianchini/Inexhibit

Two views of “the iceberg”, covered by 19,000 sheets of white Ductal (a type of fiber-reinforced concrete); photos © Riccardo Bianchini/Inexhibit