Within the Collateral Events of the Architecture Biennale 2025, this revolutionary exhibition, hosted at the Giorgio Cini Foundation, reveals the innovative design signed by Jean Nouvel for the new headquarters of Cartier Foundation. Since its foundation in 1984, Fondation Cartier has placed architecture at the heart of its programming as a catalyst for interdisciplinary dialogue. Its emblematic headquarters, designed by Jean Nouvel and inaugurated in 1994 on Boulevard Raspail in Paris, redefined exhibition design, creating a majestic glass and steel structure that challenges architectural conventions through a striking dematerialization. Thirty years later, Fondation Cartier has once again commissioned Jean Nouvel to reimagine a mid-2th-century Haussmannian building located next to the Louvre at 2025 Place du Palais-Royal, scheduled to open in late XNUMX. This project pushes the boundaries of architectural design and fully embodies the mission of Fondation Cartier: to foster dialogue with all forms of contemporary artistic creation.
In Venice, visitors will have the opportunity to explore the spaces of the new architectural project of Fondation Cartier
A large-scale sectional model of the new spaces reveals the potential of an architecture that is configured as a dynamic exhibition tool. Five height-adjustable platforms allow for multiple combinations of volumes, voids and spaces, thus offering extraordinary opportunities for multidisciplinary programming. The perception and experience of the internal architectural landscape of the new Fondation Cartier home are evoked in the exhibition space through a series of projections, life-size photographs, plans and prototypes. The scenography highlights the distinctive elements of the project, such as the retractable ceilings that modulate natural light and the mechanical parapets that expand or limit the perspective on the surrounding urban landscape. The possibility of continuous transformation, expressed by the mobility of the exhibition spaces, reflects the capacity of architecture to interact transversally with all expressions of human creativity: from the visual and performing arts, to technology, science and philosophy.
The exhibition
The exhibition The Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain by Jean Nouvel celebrates the architect’s desire to conceive spaces that go beyond the mere function of buildings, becoming true cultural environments that interact harmoniously with their surroundings. In Venice, the exhibition unfolds against the backdrop of the city-museum. From the windows of the Fondazione Giorgio Cini, visitors can glimpse the urban landscape beyond the island of San Giorgio Maggiore, facing the Grand Canal. The superimposition of the exhibition onto the Venetian landscape reflects the distinctive principle of the new Fondation Cartier venue, an architectural intervention in the heart of historic Paris. Furthermore, the display of a small glass engraving of the current iconic Fondation Cartier venue on Boulevard Raspail, accompanied by a video retracing Jean Nouvel’s previous museographic projects, emphasizes the architect’s contextualist approach.
The presence of Fondation Cartier in the Collateral Events of the Architecture Biennale 2025 offers a fascinating vision of architecture as a discipline that embraces all the arts, coexisting with them in a dynamic and constantly evolving relationship through exhibition creations.
Cover image: The building that will house the Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain from autumn 2025 on the Place du Palais-Royal, Paris. Interior design by Jean Nouvel. Photo © Luc Boegly
