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Centre Pompidou, Paris Design Week 2025

Absence makes the heart grow fonder. As the Centre Pompidou prepares to close for a five-year restoration led by Moreau Kusunoki and Frida Escobedo, the inside-out spirit of the Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers building seems to be taking the Parisian creative scene by storm all over again. 

A view of a Wolfgang Tillmanns exhibition held at the Centre Pompidou during Paris Design Week 2025, with photographs of varying sizes=
At the Centre Pompidou, photographer Wolfgang Tillmans presented some 3,000 images. Photo by Jens Ziehe, courtesy of Galerie Buchholz, Galerie Chantal Crousel, Maureen Paley, and David Zwirner.

During the city’s September design week, festival-goers were eager to discuss “Nothing could have prepared us — Everything could have prepared us,” the Wolfgang Tillmans exhibition that served as the Centre Pompidou’s pre-reno swan song. Staged in what would normally be the museum’s library, it was a monumental finale to the architectural landmark’s first chapter, with many Tillmans photos placed in amusing relationship to their surroundings. In one corner, a splotchy abstract shot mirrored a stain on the floor below it, while in other areas, the building’s striped carpeting and blue ceiling pipes became extensions of geometric elements found within nearby photos.

At Paris Design Week 2025, the Centre Pompidou exhibition filled what would normally be the museum’s library.
The exhibition filled what would normally be the museum’s library. Photo by Jens Ziehe, courtesy of Galerie Buchholz, Galerie Chantal Crousel, Maureen Paley, and David Zwirner.

Emptied of almost everything else — a banner in the desolate lobby declared “That’s all folks” with an asterisk at the end — the rest of the Pompidou had the feeling of a recently decommissioned factory. Thankfully, there are no plans to start production on an entirely new model; instead, the 1977 building will simply be undergoing some necessary service repairs. Hopefully, the tubes and ducts that encase it will emerge feeling as fresh as ever. As we become more distrustful of modern tech’s mysterious algorithms, which rarely reveal their moving parts, the radical candor of the late-1970s high-tech movement holds new appeal.

Many Paris Design Week participants seemed to agree. Several opted to place a design’s functional components front and centre — as was the case with Stéven Coëffic’s floor lamp [above left] that affixed prominent, protruding ceramic shades to a simple wooden beam, or Petite Friture’s aluminum-framed Eclipse daybed (by Garnier Pingree) [above right], which leaves little to the imagination when it comes to its construction.

Meanwhile, seating and lighting brought a sense of playfulness to industrial forms normally found inside an engine room or at a construction site. At “Design Disco Club” — an avant-garde exhibition organized by local creative studio Pli Office to “rethink the relationship between industrial and human rhythms” — Moustache’s Extra Bold sofa (by Big Game) [above left] resembled rainbow-hued radiator coils, while Lambert & Fils expanded its Ipoli family with a crane like swing-arm light [above right].

Exhibiting in Paris Design Week’s Factory showcase of up-and-comers, the designers at Office Studio punctuated their modular Beam shelving with circular vent-like holes [above left]. And at Maison&Objet, Parisian studio Hall Haus led the show’s Design District with more hole-punched steel furniture [above right].

Finally, Heller launched a miniature version of its Swell catchall by Anna Dawson [above]. Rather than stashing on-the-go essentials in a drawer when you get home, why not put them on full display? Spill your guts — the Pompidou would be proud.

Alternatively, two of Paris’s launches instead appealed to the city’s très chic spirit of sophistication. Snøhetta’s modular Borealis collection for Citterio [above left] balances rigour with comfort, combining a linear oak frame with upholstered cushions. And at Galerie Kreo, Ronan Bouroullec presented “Clair-obscur,” [above right] an exhibition of light sculptures that strike a balance between his design and art practices.


Paris Design Week 2025 Revives the Gutsy Spirit of the Centre Pompidou

Furniture modelled after architecture’s inner workings kept France’s design festival operating like a well-oiled machine.

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