Louis-Vuitton Foundation for Creation | Frank Gehry

Frank Gehry’s architecture has produced many well-known and iconic structures and his design for Louis Vuitton’s Foundation for Creation is no exception. A project that has been in the works since October 2006 is now planned for completion by September 2014 and will be open to the public at that time. The amount of time taken to fully construct the structure is mainly due to finding a solution to forming the curving walls of the building and bizarre forms imagined by the famous architect.

The museum is located in the Sixteenth Arrondissement of Paris and is supposed to showcase art and France to the world along with house the contemporary art collection of LVMH mogul Bernard Arnaud. Referred to as “a veritable ship amongst trees”, the design features a hovering glass carapace and various sails that part at various points to reveal concrete “icebergs” at the building’s core.

In order to build the museum it was determined that the façade would require 16,000 exterior wall panels each with its own geometry to form the curves. To produce these panels a unique vacuum casting process was developed to create flexible molds that could take on any curvature determined by a 3-D model with a master polystyrene template machined to the desired panel geometry. This process was ultimately able to manufacture 400 panels with identical dimensions, but with different curvatures. The panels were also cast with a number and radio frequency ID chip to ensure each can be traced throughout the installation process and for future purposes as well.