Bernard Arnault, una de las grandes fortunas francesas y presidente del emporio de tiendas de lujo LVMH (Louis Vuitton y Moët Hennessy), contrató los servicios del arquitecto Frank Gehry para dar forma a un museo que finalmente decidió situarse en los terrenos cedidos por el Ayuntamiento parisino en pleno bosque de Boulogne.The forest west of Paris, in the sixteenth district boundary, two and half times larger than Central Park in New York and three more than Hyde Park in London, Parisian park gives this story, leisure and, above all, French movie moments.
There should rise in a few years (the inauguration was scheduled for 2012) an impressive glass building over 40 feet high by 150 long. In addition to the exhibition spaces, dedicated to the art of the twentieth and twenty-first, Foundation will have an auditorium, terraces and a documentation center, spread over an area of 2.400 m. But neither the original design of the architect or prestige, author of the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, excited about the neighbors, organized around the Association pour la Sauvegarde Coordination du Bois de Boulogne. For them, despite all its transparencies, the building continues to be a concrete block in the middle of his forest. And it illegal maneuver Paris City Council that allows the building of this area, so they have resorted to justice. In late January, a court in their favor and overturned the building permit.
The City, governed by the Socialist Bertrand Delanoë, appealed the decision and the appeal court this time just opt for the municipality.
Construction, as a cloud-like shapes and located in Bilbao Guggenheim Museum, has been praised for its aesthetics within the artistic guild but Boulogne park advocates have reported that they will continue to fight to stop the project.
Amidst this legal and political mess, Gehry has manifested “dismayed, indignant and furious”, told the British newspaper The Telegraph. “They want to put Paris in formaldehyde. It's pretty pathetic”, meanwhile told the Journal du Dimanche Frenchman Jean Nouvel, after hearing the first court decision that halted the project.
See also Social opposition to the architecture of Frank Gehry
