Frank Gehry outlines how he made a dramatic Paris art museum for LVMH
A zoological garden in Paris is the site of Gehry's latest work: a ship-like glass complex
A vast glass structure, a great airy ship of a building, has sailed into the Bois de Boulogne park in Paris, and if lions did not have exceptionally loud roars at six in the morning, it might not have happened at all.
In 1952, a rich man called Marcel Boussac, who lived in a luxury apartment beside the Bois de Boulogne, was unable to sleep because of the lions calling for their breakfast (and their mates) beneath his window.
He asked the zoo to address the problem. The zookeepers said that lions would be lions, so Boussac responded in a way that only an incredibly wealthy person could do: he bought the zoo.
Once the big cats were gone (safely, it seems, to a home elsewhere in France), and he'd had a few good nights' sleep, Boussac quietly added the leasehold for the Jardin d'Acclimatation to the investment portfolio of his company. Then he apparently forgot all about it.
So did everyone else until a few decades later when the new head of the luxury conglomerate Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy (LVMH) was puzzling over his latest acquisitions.
There, on the furthest reaches of an empire of luxury brands that included fashion house Christian Dior and champagne-maker Dom Perignon, was a five-hectare zoological garden complete with a little train, hothouses, pony rides and a petting zoo (although there were absolutely no lions).