French billionaire and collector François Pinault has unveiled plans to set up a museum in Paris for his collected art. It was decided to adapt the former commodity exchange for the museum - a 19th century building with a glass dome, which is a ten-minute walk from the Louvre and the Palais Royal. To work on the reconstruction, François Pinault once again called the Japanese architect Tadao Ando, who, at the request of the billionaire, turned two historic buildings in Venice into the Palazzo Grassi museum and the sovriska center of Punta della Dogana. The Paris project will also feature the French bureau NeM Architects, architect Pierre-Antoine Gatier (co-director of the French Heritage Society, a non-profit heritage conservation organization) and engineering company Setec.
Tadao Ando suggests placing a cylinder 9 meters high and 30 meters in diameter inside the existing building, divided into three levels, two of which will go underground. The outer surface of the cylinder and the historic “inner façade” will be connected by a corridor, thus creating a new circulation space. Note that the exchange building has undergone several reconstructions in its history; the architect Henri Blondel in 1889 built the part that today serves as the facade of the building. Tadao Ando's project, in addition to redesigning the interior, also includes the restoration of the external and internal appearance of the building according to the model of 1889. The restoration of the building is estimated at $ 121 million, the opening of the museum is scheduled for 2019.
The customer is sure that Ando is one of the few specialists who is able to build a dialogue between architecture and the existing context, between the past and the present, and skillfully balance between originality and prudence. François Pinault hopes that his ambitious project will become a kind of beacon in difficult times for France -
with the terrorist threat hanging over the country and Britain's withdrawal from the European Union - and will remind the French of the country's cultural heritage and "revive hopes for the future."
The new building of the museum will become the next stage of the confrontation between Pinault and another richest man in France, an art lover
Bernard Arnault. The owner of the LVMH company (which includes, for example, the Louis Vuitton brand) three years ago built a private museum in Paris with an area of 11 thousand square meters.2; the project was developed by another "star" architect - Frank Gehry.
