Travel Pick: Art and Archaeology in France
Andrea Branzi

The installations presented at the Fondation Cartier have evolved out of one of the Florentine architect and designer Andrea Branzi’s major preoccupations: how may we reinvent architecture following its demise? Branzi (b. 1938) argues that modern architecture, with its emphasis on closed form and definitive function, has not only lost touch with “the intimate needs and behaviour of users” but also with the general needs of a “fluid” society based on electronics and services. Embracing the opposing realities of the natural and the artificial, the industrial and the handmade, the work of Andrea Branzi strives to reflect the complexities of contemporary society, encouraging viewers to rethink their relationship to the built environment.

Realized in glass and metal interweaved with natural elements such as branches and flowers, these installations, immersed in the musical environment of Patti Smith, aim to create a dialogue with the architecture of Jean Nouvel’s building.