{"id":90621,"date":"2025-08-26T18:44:37","date_gmt":"2025-08-26T18:44:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ccmagazine.es\/?p=90621"},"modified":"2025-08-26T18:44:37","modified_gmt":"2025-08-26T18:44:37","slug":"studio-ossidiana-reinvents-the-museum-with-the-fun-palace","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ccmagazine.es\/en\/studio-ossidiana-reinvents-the-museum-with-the-fun-palace\/","title":{"rendered":"Studio Ossidiana reinvents the museum with The Fun Palace"},"content":{"rendered":"

Commissioned as part of The Fun Palace<\/em>, a joint initiative between the Centre Pompidou<\/em><\/a> and GrandPalaisRmn<\/em><\/a>, this ephemeral installation transformed the Salon d\u2019Honneur of the Grand Palais<\/em> into a nomadic cultural embassy for the Pompidou<\/em> during its temporary closure. A proposal that could be experienced last June and which, although no longer standing, we at CC\/magazine<\/em> like to revisit as a source of inspiration. Because it was not just an exhibition: it was a landscape of softness, a scenography of possibilities, a dream made matter.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is a landscape of softness, a scenography of possibilities, a dream made material.\u201d<\/h2>\n
A palace made of fabric, dreams and togetherness<\/h6>\n

The concept of Soft Palace<\/em> is as poetic as it is political. Conceived by Alessandra Covini<\/em> and Giovanni Bellotti<\/em>, founders of Studio Ossidiana<\/em>, the space unfolded as a gigantic textile structure: a rolled and folded carpet transformed into a monumental garment. Each fold, each pocket was designed to be inhabited, explored, or simply enjoyed.<\/p>\n

Visitors were invited to walk barefoot, lie down, sit wherever they wished, or wander between exhibitions, performances, games, and moments of quiet solitude.<\/p>\n

Soft Palace<\/em> was both stage and shelter. It could host a collective assembly or offer the retreat of a fabric fold for a nap. A place where everyone could be spectator and actor at once, where everyday life and artistic expression merged into a shared choreography. In the words of its creators, it was a space “where one could choose to be with others, to play, discuss, listen\u2026 or to hide, rest, be alone and find intimacy only steps away from a public assembly”<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Beyond architecture: a landscape of radical hospitality<\/h6>\n

Studio Ossidiana<\/em> is known for working at the intersection of architecture, landscape, and material narratives. Previous projects include floating gardens inhabited by birds, outdoor public kitchens, land art pavilions, and immersive worlds designed for both humans and non-humans.<\/p>\n

With Soft Palace<\/em>, this approach entered the heart of one of Europe\u2019s most iconic cultural venues, proposing a new form of radical hospitality. The installation rejected hierarchy: no stages, no pedestals, no privileged rows. Every place was equally valid. Every person decided how to participate.<\/p>\n

In doing so, it challenged the traditional idea of what a museum can be. Instead of permanence, it offered ephemerality. Instead of passive contemplation, active presence. Instead of exclusion, inclusion. The museum became a living, breathing organism.<\/p>\n

A curated playground for art and imagination<\/h6>\n

Soft Palace<\/em> was not an empty shell. Within its folds, multiple artistic interventions and contemporary narratives took place:<\/p>\n

– Nightcrawlers<\/em>, an experimental video game by artist Alice Bucknell<\/em>, turned digital exploration into a narrative of speculative futures.<\/p>\n

– A selection of design pieces from the Centre Pompidou<\/em> collection, curated by Olivier Zeitoun<\/em> and Marie-Ange Brayer<\/em>, invited reflection on form, function, and sensory experience.<\/p>\n

– Philosopher Emanuele Coccia<\/em>, whose writings on ecology, perception and coexistence deeply informed the spatial narrative, contributed as a key collaborator.<\/p>\n

– The overall curatorship was led by Jean-Max Colard<\/em>, Jos\u00e9phine Huppert<\/em> and Alice Pialoux<\/em>, who intertwined the artistic, philosophical, and architectural dimensions into a unified proposal.<\/p>\n

This was not simply a multidisciplinary project. It was postdisciplinary. Art, philosophy, architecture, play and politics did not merely coexist: they collided, contaminated, and fertilised one another.<\/p>\n

The politics of softness<\/h6>\n

In an era of sharp edges \u2014 with the rise of extremisms, cultural closures and hardening borders \u2014 Soft Palace<\/em> offered a quiet yet powerful alternative: softness as strength. The ability to yield, to embrace, to welcome.<\/p>\n

The installation became a tactile manifesto of what cultural space can mean in the 21st century. And this took on special significance in the context of the Centre Pompidou<\/em>\u2019s renovation, a symbolic pause for one of the world\u2019s most important institutions of modern art.<\/p>\n

Rather than disappearing, the museum reinvented itself through movement, mutability, vulnerability: qualities rarely associated with large cultural infrastructures.<\/p>\n

A nomadic embassy of the imagination<\/h6>\n

As its authors underline, Soft Palace<\/em> was also an embassy. But not of a nation \u2014 of imagination, collectivity and tenderness. It represented a temporary yet powerful alternative to fixed architecture and rigid curatorship.<\/p>\n

Much like the original Fun Palace<\/em> envisioned by Cedric Price<\/em> in the 1960s \u2014 a never-built space designed for learning, play and continuous transformation \u2014 Studio Ossidiana<\/em>\u2019s proposal renewed that vision with contemporary urgency, for a world in need of more porosity, more play, more possibility.<\/p>\n

A model for the institutions of the future?<\/h6>\n

Soft Palace<\/em> was an ephemeral installation, but its message endures: what if our museums looked more like this? What if public spaces prioritised comfort and participation over spectacle and control? What if softness appeared in the blueprints of our institutions?<\/p>\n

By asking these questions, Studio Ossidiana<\/em> shows that it is not only designing spaces: it is designing possible futures. And perhaps that is the most necessary architecture of all today.<\/p>\n

\u201cSoft Palace is not an empty space. Within its folds, multiple artistic interventions and contemporary narratives found their place.\u201d<\/h2>\n

(*)<\/strong> Photos: Riccardo de Vecchi.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Commissioned as part of The Fun Palace, a joint initiative between the Centre Pompidou and GrandPalaisRmn, this ephemeral installation transformed the Salon d\u2019Honneur of the Grand Palais into a nomadic cultural embassy for the Pompidou during its temporary closure. A proposal that could be experienced last June and which, although no longer standing, we at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":90389,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5900,5902,5901],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-90621","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-art-en","category-exhibitions","category-artists"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nStudio Ossidiana reinvents the museum with The Fun Palace<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Studio Ossidiana\u2019s Soft Palace at the Grand Palais reimagines the museum: art, play and radical hospitality in an ephemeral experience.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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