Walking around in Paris is always a journey of discovery, especially if you haven’t been there for a while. Time and dynamics are slowly changing the city. The major monuments will of course always remain, but the local economy and urban renewal are sometimes like a facelift for some of the streets and neighbourhoods.

Bourse de Commerce, originally a place to negotiate and trade grain, was build at the end of the 18th century.
The building underwent several renovations before finally being leased to François Pinault for 50 years in 2016. It was he who commissioned architect Tadao Ando to convert the building into a museum. He came up with the idea of placing a nine-metre-high concrete circle with a diameter of 30 metres in the dome hall, which would serve as the museum’s main exhibition hall. The museum was officially opened in May 2021. Since then the building has been the Parisian exhibition site of the Pinault Collection.
The dome of the building is listed as a historical monument.

With architecture, more specifically renovations, you are often either for it or against it. In this case I am totally for it; the concrete cylinder, together with the dome and the gallery, is a wonderful combination. Or, like the French would say: ‘un mariage parfait’. The simplicity of the light concrete cylinder, combined with the classic dome creates a “Zen feeling”.

The main theme in the museum was ‘ Arte Povera’.
In the mid-1960s, Italian artists started to create art works with simple materials to find out why matter matters. A return to basics.
Rooted in the Mediterranean culture, appreciating the beauty of simple things, they mastered the mechanics of metamorphosis. Giuseppe Penone‘s works are beautiful in their simplicity. The shape of the young tree was arrived at by carving the trunk of an ancient cedar from the forest of Versailles. One of his works ‘Light & shadow’ is the eye-catcher of Musée Cantonal des Beaux-Arts in Lausanne. You can’t miss the 14 meters tall piece of art, it’s in their main entrance hall.