ABSTRACT

ABSTRACT: Louis Vuitton Fondation is a private modern art foundation located in Bois de Boulogne, on the outskirts of Paris. This building designed by canadian architect Frank Gehry and stands out by his particular curved shapes, important cantilevers and unusual façades. The main expressive part of the project is that it clearly separates useful volumes (with concrete and steel structure hidden by a white cladding) and the “verrières” (glass shells crowning the building). The entire building with all assembling details has been modeled with Digital Projet - Catia, being the major graphic documents produced for the contractor. The sharing documents protocol provided by Catia was very useful during the design process in order to exchange information among the design team formed by about a hundred of architects, structural engineers, façade engineers and mechanical engineers located in Los Angeles and Paris. The structural design consists in a reinforced concrete structure and metallic frames which house a large entrance hall, eleven exhibition halls and the museum's auditorium. Geometry was never the same and every solution became a unique solution. The non-standard nature of the project obliged the team to work in interdisciplinary teams very closely, as the interaction with other specialities was at first unknown as the solution was never tested. Due to the structural complexity of the building has made a full modeling of the building with the program ANSYS, petals and glass structure to analyze the coupling behavior between civil and structural glass petals.