Azzedine Alaïa is pleased to present in his Galerie the exhibition Jean Nouvel/Claude Parent, musées à venir, a dramatisation of the conversation between these two leading figures of French architecture.

The exhibition brings together four museum projects conceived by Jean Nouvel, and four by Claude Parent. None of them has, to this point, been realised ; they offer an entry into forty-five years of the two architects’ oeuvre.

From the Institut du Monde Arabe to the Louvre Abu-Dhabi, including the Fondation Cartier and the Musée du Quai Branly, Jean Nouvel is widely acknowledged as one of the greatest builders of museums in the contemporary world. Claude Parent, often seen as an « utopian » architect has in fact consistently raised the issue of the relation humans entertain to their past – the question of the museum. Their takes, at the same time apparently distinct and constantly in dialogue, are unveiled : their relation to space, to the situation, the relation to the works of art; the role of architecture in culture.