PARIS.- Lafayette Anticipations – Fondation d’entreprise Galeries Lafayette announced its opening to the public in March 2018 at the 9 rue du Plâtre, in Paris. The Fondation was created in October 2013 by the Galeries Lafayette Group and at the initiative of Guillaume Houzé, who serves as its President. This general interest foundation offers international artists, from the fields of contemporary art, design and fashion, tailor-made resources to produce, experiment and exhibit new pieces. Infused with this mission and its unique identity, the Fondation d’entreprise Galeries Lafayette is the first multidisciplinary centre of this kind in France.
Rem Koolhaas’ first architectural project in Paris
The Fondation is housed in a 19th century industrial building located in the heart of the Marais, in Paris. Rem Koolhaas and his agency, OMA, are renovating the site. The architect has conceived the 2, 000m2 space as a curatorial machine and has introduced in its courtyard a glass “exhibition tower” composed of four mobile platforms. With each exhibit, an innovative play of the platforms will allow the space to be reconfigured in over forty different ways. The 9 rue du Plâtre building thus instils flexibility and adaptability, as required by numerous future projects. After three years of construction, this structure features 800m2 of exhibition space, production workshops, an area dedicated to young audiences, a restaurant and a store. These spaces’ original offer will reflect the Fondation’s pioneering nature.
A laboratory of anticipation open to all audiences
Three to four annual exhibits, but also performance and workshop series will punctuate the Fondation’s artistic programme, open to the general public. The artists will be recommended and selected by François Quintin, the Fondation’s Managing Director, and a curatorial collective renewed every three years. The Fondation also wishes to be a place for exchanges, encounters, outreach and public debate around societal subjects that artists never fail to anticipate and question. In other words, the Fondation aims to prepare and assemble the necessary conditions for the emergence of new pieces and ideas; to not predict but to be prepared, to anticipate the needs of creators so as to engage with confidence in that which never ceases to occur.
