To rehabilitate something that is already there means acknowledging and retaining its past while preparing it for the future. This inescapable dialogue with time becomes that much more indispensable the greater the building’s aura, and that of the Grand Palais, which was originally built for the Universal Expo of 1900, is extraordinary. Its restoration will do more than simply increase its capacity to host visitors, optimise its use, and facilitate visitor access. It is above all an opportunity to bolster its ambition as a “cultural engine” that exalts its republican vocation. The project must therefore promote values such as effectiveness, sobriety, and the celebration of cultural heritage. It must place present and future usages and users (visitors and artists alike) at the heart of the design process.

Given the complexity and challenges of the restoration, the response cannot be reduced to a few spatial rearrangements. By invoking varied disciplines such as restoration, stage design, and climate engineering, the project instead envisions a coherent whole that seeks to restore the site’s inherent sense of unity and fluidity. By analysing the different situations within the Grand Palais, we are able to transform limits into strengths. Its qualities are preserved as resources to be revealed. In this way, the intervention to revitalise the northern and southern entrances focuses on the intermediate building, where the square Jean Perrin, a new urban landmark, guides visitors across an open square and two ramps. Inside, the “Grande rue des Palais,” which hosts the main visitor reception area, creates a gradual transition from city to galleries. It becomes a platform that connects to the different exhibitions. This multi-storey volume is nothing short of majestic. With its emphasis on the original east-west axis, it lets the visiting public perceive the main nave and the rotunda of the Palais d’Antin all at once. Beginning with the ambulatory, a circular course then cuts through the Grand Palais, its architecture highlighted through careful framings of emblematic elements such as the nave and its glass structure, the overhangs, and the pylons. The visit concludes with a walk along the rooftop, a highlight for visitors who can see all of Paris from here.

In order for the staging of the building’s past to mix with the anticipation of its future, the monument’s restoration is an opportunity to promote a pluralist, stimulating approach to culture. This is based on a usage of the site that involves both the presentation of works and their comprehension. The Grand Palais’ spatial wealth opens new possibilities for experiencing contemporary art and exhibiting works (videos, photographs, installations, performances, etc.) that tend to push traditionally shaped galleries to their functional limits. Therefore, the transformation of the National Galleries will host ambitious, imaginative works by developing a variety of museographic concepts and situations in terms of volumes, lighting, materials, all in relation to the exterior. It is not so much a question of making the exhibition spaces flexible as considering them events in and of themselves by profiting from their original, extraordinary characteristics. Thus, the Grand Palais will decisively enter a new era with an awareness of its intelligent past.

Client: Réunion des Musée Nationaux Grand Palais / Cost: € 155M excl. VAT / Surface: 69312 m² / Schedule: 2014 – 2023 / Terrell group (Structure, Façade and M.E.P.), Batiserf (Concrete structure), BMF (Surveyor), Franck Boutté (HEQ), Base (Landscape), Lamoureux (Acoustic), Systematica (Traffic Engineering), CASSO & Associés (Security), Mathieu Lehanneur (Designer), CICAD (OPC), dUCKS scéno (Scenography), 8'18'' (Lighting)