Paris

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Keeping the Faith

According to the Hermès family’s sixth generation, the empire built on leather and silk is not a luxury brand. Art is the heart of the matter.

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Jackson Pollock Le Corbusier Paul Gauguin A Giacometti Renzo Piano Dealer Holly Solomon’s Papers Headed to Smithsonian Warhols Send Sotheby’s Soaring Busa Paintings Pilfered from Son’s Home

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Les Frigos
A sort of ancien 104, this collective of artists, designers, musicians, comedians, web radio broadcasters, photographers, decorators—you name it—inhabits the vast five-story former Gare Frigorifique de Paris- Ivry. Exuberant events, parties, and shows happen constantly.
91, Quai de la Gare, 13th arr. 336/64-13-90-69
les-frigos.com

Le Laboratoire
This supercool new center for art and science (combined) in a historic post-industrial space was founded by French-American David Edwards, author of Artscience: Creativity in the Post-Google Era—as you’d expect, it’s modern.
4, Rue du Bouloi , 1st Arr. 331/78-09-49-50
lelaboratoire.org

La Pinacotheque de Paris
This major private gallery-museum opened in summer. This fall (after the Terracotta Warriors depart) the exhibits include Georges Rouault paintings from the Sazo Idemitsu collection, and Jackson Pollock works that show how the painter was influenced by American Indian shamanism. 28, Pl. de la Madeleine, 8th arr. 331/42-68-02-01
pinacotheque.com

Rue Louise Weiss
Near the new Cité de la Mode, nine young contemporary galleries form a coherent group, exhibiting together at Art Basel, Frieze Art Fair, etc.
Rue Louise Weiss, 13th arr. 336/01-94-53-57
louise13.fr

Suite Elle Decoration
Palais de Chaillot architect Jacques Carlu’s apartment was decorated, fancifully and inspiringly, by Christian Lacroix, collaborating with Elle Décor—and it’s an extraordinary space. You will want to move in. In December, the next designer takes the jewel. Closed Tuesdays.
1, Place du Trocadero, 16th arr. 331/58-51-52-00
citechaillot.fr

Cite de la Mode et du Design

For the average visitor to Paris, la Rive Gauche only extends as far east as the Jardin des Plantes—or the Gare d’Austerlitz at a stretch. But get ready to expand those boundaries. The essential itinerary now includes the next Arrondissement along: the 13th.

Opening this fall is the eagerly anticipated (especially by design hounds) Cité de la Mode et du Design (City of Fashion and Design), a wildly green $62.2 million structure by Paris architects Jakob + MacFarlane (best known for the restaurant Georges at the Centre Pompidou) that snakes along the Quai d’Austerlitz by the Pont de Bercy, in the shadow of Mitterrand’s bibliothèque. It’s the new home of the IFM (Institut Français de la Mode) plus design ateliers, stores, restaurants, cafés, event spaces, and a rooftop park. And having had a good nose around it with the architect, I can tell you, it really is good enough to redraw the map.

Its alternative name, “Paris Docks en Seine,” gives the heads-up— this place is best approached from the water, an attribute that was built into the plans from the first. Says principal (with partner—also in life—Dominique Jakob) Brendan MacFarlane, “All the development that’s gone on on the edge of the Thames has been a huge stimulation. Paris doesn’t happen on its own. We created a face for something that was faceless.”

And what a face. Nobody—except, true to form, Le Corbusier—had noticed this structure, the 1907 former Magasins Généraux d’Austerlitz. Nobody will ever miss it now. “This was a purely functional stock building, one of the earliest reinforced concrete structures in Paris, not considered architecture,” says MacFarlane. “We were given a choice in competition to keep or lose it, but we thought it very beautiful and very unusual. It’s highly artisanal concrete—not the kind we make today. The sculptural aspects appealed.” These have been amplified by the audacious emerald appendage the architects affectionately named Le Plug Over. “We imagine there’s a huge extruded object running over the building,” says MacFarlane, accurately. Ascending the wooden stairway inside Le Plug Over is fun. Supported by geometries of green piping, an articulated green-flecked glass wall undulates, at times actually taking you out over the water. The glass is super hi-tech: Rhomboid shapes, sealed between two layers, vary in size according to height and angle, in what MacFarlane calls “a moirage effect—it’s 70-50-30 percent opaque from top to bottom; it’s a façade in flux, with the movement of the river.”