The Soft Palace is an installation developed as part of the Fun Palace, an initiative of Centre Pompidou x GrandPalaisRmn. The project is hosting the video game Nightcrawlers by artist Alice Bucknell, and a selection of design pieces from the Centre Pompidou’s collection curated by Olivier Zeitoun and Marie-Ange Brayer. The Fun Palace is developed in collaboration with philosopher Emanuele Coccia and curated by Jean-Max Colard, Joséphine Huppert and Alice Pialoux. The Fun Palace is a co-production of the Centre Pompidou and GrandPalaisRmn with the support of the Chanel Culture Fund.
Last summer, as the Pompidou was preparing to close its doors to the public, we began to imagine a nomadic embassy for the museum, which could travel and host its people, art, and events during the Beaubourg’s renovation. Its first destination, the Salon d’Honneur within the Grand Palais.
We thought of this place as a soft palace, an address for big and small assemblies, events, exhibitions, where to be together, play, discuss, listen, but also where one could hide, have a nap, choose to be alone, and find the intimacy of a shelter a few steps away from a public assembly or a performance.
We designed the Soft Palace as a vast textile surface, a carpet folded and rolled onto itself to become a gigantic garment, of which every crease and fold could be explored, and every pocket inhabited. Once we step on it, we can move barefoot, lie or sit anywhere, take a stroll between exhibitions, performances, and games, participate in the collective choreography of its movements and events, or peek from the sheltered privacy of a side pocket.
Within the Soft Palace, any place can become the stage for an assembly, an event, or a performance, and we hope that every visitor will be both actor and spectator in the collective choreography of their day-to-day life.
Architects: Studio Ossidiana; Year: 2025; Photographs:Riccardo de Vecchi;
