A beautiful book embodying Frank Gehry’s radical design for the Fondation Louis Vuitton

When the Fondation Louis Vuitton was unveiled in 2014 in the Bois de Boulogne in Paris, after a decade in the making and an as yet still unknown budget, the Frank Gehry-designed building seemed to stand as an impossible feat of engineering. Surrounded by sweeping glass sails, the cultural centre’s design was a meeting of the minds between Gehry and chairman and CEO of luxury goods conglomerate LVMH, Bernard Arnault.

A book detailing the laboured process behind the Fondation mimics its design with a shimmering blue cover and thick plastic casing modelled after Gehry’s sails. The monograph is the handiwork of Paris-based studio Prototype, whose designers Aurore Jannin and Laurent Pinnon mostly work on publishing projects and have amassed a stellar list of clients since establishing their joint practice last year.

As curator of the architectural exhibition which accompanied the Fondation’s opening, the book is edited under the direction of Frédéric Migayrou. Including over 350 photographs, sketches and maps, it shows the various stages of the project’s development. These are accompanied by essays from architecture critics and art historians analysing Gehry’s building.

The impactful, evocative cover and case is accompanied by beautiful stencilled type and restrained layouts inside, and prove the designers more than worthy of their past commissions from Centre Pompidou, Beaux Arts Magazine and LVMH.