Frank Gehry’s glass sails seem to hover above a white sculptural core at Fondation Louis Vuitton. The building draws on the lightness of nineteenth-century glass garden architecture while using digitally designed forms and custom materials to create a shifting visual presence.
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From the edge of the Bois de Boulogne, the building can look like a glass ship or a cloud caught among the trees. Frank Gehry described his aim as creating a vessel for Paris’s cultural vocation, and the Fondation’s architecture turns that metaphor into structure.
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UpgradeQuick facts
- Frank Gehry designed Fondation Louis Vuitton.
- The building opened to the public on October 27, 2014.
- Its exterior uses twelve glass sails and thousands of individually shaped glass panels.
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