Floating above the Bois de Boulogne in Paris are the glass sails of the Louis Vuitton Foundation, the new $143 million art museum and cultural center sponsored by LVMH, designed by Frank Gehry and opened in October 2014.

This new addition to the cultural life of Paris has not been without controversy.  The park is owned by the City of Paris which granted a building permit in 2007 but, in 2011, the organisation which safeguards the park, the Coordination for the Safeguarding of the Bois de Boulogne, successfully appealed to the courts for the building permit to be revoked on the basis that the building was inappropriate for its location and would damage the environment of the historic park. To overcome this, the Assemblée Nationale passed legislation that the Foundation was in the national interest and “a major work of art for the whole world”, and it was allowed to proceed.  It would have been a great pity had it not gone ahead as it has added a contemporary cultural and art centre and a good new piece of architecture to Paris, and a good deal for the City of Paris as the building reverts to them after 55 years.

Frank Gehry is said to have been inspired by glass exhibition and garden structures such as the Grand Palais and the Palmarium built for the Jardin d’Acclimation in 1893. The centre provides two upper floors of galleries, with smaller galleries on the ground and lower-ground floor, where there is also a 350-seat auditorium.  At the top of the building, a series of open terraces provide outdoor spaces for events and art installations and views across the city, sheltered by the 12 curving glass roofs like the sails of a sailboat inflated by the wind.

The 11,700 sq m (126,000 sq ft) building was achieved using innovative technology including a real-time 3D digital model from the aviation industry, which was shared by all the project team, and industrial robots to mould the 3,600 individually-shaped glass panels and 19,000 concrete panels of the façade from the model.

The museum has a changing programme of exhibitions including works by Gilbert and George, Andy Warhol and Thomas Schütte, with site specific installations by a number of artists, one of the most dramatic being at the lower level alongside the reflective pools by Olafur Eliasson whose Inside the Horizon (2014), is formed of 43 prism-shaped yellow and mirrored columns providing a variety of reflections to the viewer.

This is a masterful new art museum in Paris, and continues the glass and light theme of I M Pei’s Louvre Pyramid, this time in a parkland setting reached by walking through the park or an inexpensive shuttle bus from the Arc du Triomphe.