How has Paris managed with a museum similar to the Thyssen?

One of the most brilliant things about Paris is that the city is too ambitious to be consumed by mere glitz and glamour. After several failures, and a disastrous 1980s in terms of supposedly modern facades and pretentious architecture, Paris now builds buildings that subordinate their appearance to the harmony and proportion of the streets they surround. What a relief. The new buildings bring back the tones of limestone (off-white), zinc roofs, and Haussmannian windows, which are wide and tall enough to fill a dining room wall like a painting, but never disrupt the balance between solid and void on the facade. All of this allows those who stroll, appreciating visual coherence, to enjoy streets where it's barely possible to discern where one building begins and another ends. There aren't enough hours of sunlight to wander through Paris and imagine what three or four solid principles would make for a good new street in a newly built neighborhood.

So powerful is the heritage dimension of urban planning in Paris that even Jean Nouvel has had to adapt by completely redesigning an 1855 Haussmannian building opposite the Louvre to house the new Cartier Foundation. Originally built as a hotel, converted into a Louvre shopping center, and finally repurposed as an antiques shop, the building fell into disuse in 2018. How could such a centrally located building, with so much heritage value, remain closed? It seems impossible that a retail space dedicated to antiques on such a prominent corner, between the Rue de Rivoli and Rue Saint-Honoré, wouldn't be successful. The new program not only attracts visitors from all over but also revitalizes the famous porticoed structure by Percier and Fontaine.

The exhibition space occupies almost 6,500 m²² And the collection is surprisingly interesting. There are numerous pieces related to architecture, including those from regions where cities grow organically, without the authority of powerful laws and investors, as in the West.

The museum has been built inwards, respecting the large interior courtyard and the pre-existing roofs and facades. The increase in volume was achieved by excavating one level underground and constructing a mobile exhibition system: there are five large platforms that can be raised or lowered with hydraulic jacks, like large elevators.

The resulting space is very dynamic, because from the center of the building you can see two or three half-story levels and never lose touch with the street: the large arcades have been kept transparent, so pedestrians can see the visitors and the artworks, and visitors can see the bustle of the street. It's part of the collection, and you don't need to pay extra for this spectacle: observing the busy or freezing pedestrians and realizing the privilege of spending a morning in a museum is included in the price of admission.

Thus, on the ground floor, next to Saint Honoré Street, visitors can sit in chairs carved from stone by Bijoy Jain, founder of Studio Mumbai, and contemplate a table made of minuscule clay tiles. On the table are indescribably balancing bowls by Alev Ebüzziya Siesbye, of Turkish origin, whose creation is perfectly documented in a beautiful video. And, from there, with just a slight turn of the head, one can smile at the curious passersby who gaze at us, the mesmerized visitors, and we no longer know if the work of art is them, the building, the ceramics, us, or a mixture of all of them.

The windows of old cities were points of contact with the street. Air, light, smells, and sounds filtered seamlessly between the interior and exterior. With bourgeois modernity, windows were gradually covered with layers of glass—shutters, curtains, blinds—and, little by little, the house became separated from the street. Although the panes remained large, our gaze turned to the sky, not the street. The recent history of windows doesn't end well, from the invention of the tinted curtain wall to the colonization of spaces by cell phones: we escape by staring at our screens and pay very little attention to the street. To the point that many shops have covered their windows to install large advertisements and giant screens. The effects on sidewalks are disastrous, with streets losing their vitality.

Therefore, the reorganization of the Fondation Cartier building is intelligent: it functions as a belvedere, an architecture from which you can have good views of various scenes.

It's a good example of how the city of Paris has managed to reconcile heritage, urban, and cultural interests without sacrificing the signature of an iconic architect. Given the private nature of the initiative and the project's ambition, I can't help but mention the future Thyssen museum in Barcelona: the reconstruction has resulted in a 60-square-meter café.² and a 130 m² bookstore²What if the rehabilitation of the Comedia allowed for a new visual and transparent connection with Passeig de Gràcia and the interior of the block?