Genius Loci spotlights hidden or little-known architectural treasures, offering exceptional opportunities to visit private venues that are normally closed to the public. Allowing these sites to be discovered and more widely known, the organization’s events create a dialogue between architecture and contemporary art and design, revealing each venue’s artistic resonance and revitalizing its intrinsic spirit.
Through its program of exhibitions in rare architectural creations of historic significance, Genius Loci pays tribute to outstanding artists and designers, taking a human, personal approach to their work and their creative development.
The initial edition of Genius Loci in 2021, under the patronage of the Embassy of Italy, rekindled the spirit of L’Ange Volant, designed and built in 1927 by the architect and designer Gio Ponti in Garches, on the outskirts of Paris. For its second edition in October 2022, under the patronage of the Académie des beaux-arts, the Conseil économique, social et environnemental and the Mobilier national, Genius Loci offered the public its first glimpse of a 1930s masterpiece conceived by the architect Auguste Perret in 1932, on the seventh floor of the building at 51 Rue Raynouard in Paris.
In June 2023, Genius Loci invited the emerging artist Samuel Nguyen to create a carte blanche exhibition at Ricardo Bofill’s Les Espaces d’Abraxas in Noisy-Le-Grand, featuring works created in dialogue with the building’s residents.
In October of that same year, Genius Loci unveiled a series of works by the multidisciplinary artist Benoît Maire in the Ozenfant House, Le Corbusier’s first purist building in Paris, in partnership with Villa Medici, the French Academy in Rome.
In June 2024, Genius Loci took over Maison Bernard, a masterpiece of organic architecture from the 1970s by Antti Lovag, located in Théoule-sur-Mer on the French Riviera. The exhibition, organized in partnership with the Maison Bernard Endowment Fund, spotlighted works by more than 20 artists and designers, both modern and contemporary, as well as several special commissions including a workshop hosted in partnership with Villa Arson (Nice). Especially for this edition, the artist-choreographer Némo Flouret created a site-specific performance entitled “DANCE PARC: a playground project,” a creation born of the encounter between architecture and contemporary dance, with the support of Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels.
Breaking down barriers between artistic genres and forging links between past and present, heritage and modernity, each exhibition unites artists from various creative disciplines – from painting and sculpture to olfactory design, music, dance and digital art. In its experiential exhibitions, Genius Loci strives to bring architecture to life through a sensation-oriented approach, the better to reveal the inner identity of a masterpiece.