christ & gantenbein adapts telephone exchange into paris art fair venue

Christ & Gantenbein shapes Paris Internationale 2023-2024 venue

Christ & Gantenbein realizes the exhibition design for Paris Internationale 2023-2024 at Poste Bergère-Trudaine, following their work on the 2022 edition of the independent art fair known for its nomadic character and commitment to spatial reuse. The architects propose a system of walls instead of boxes, replacing enclosed booths with open partitions that subtly guide circulation, creating visual and spatial permeability, and inviting chance encounters between visitors, artworks, and galleries. The bays, open at both ends and slightly set back from the facade, form multiple pathways through the building, while, in some instances, two galleries even share a single bay.

True to Paris Internationale’s stripped aesthetic, the architectural language remains elemental, composed of neon lighting, simple walls with minimal finishes, and reused materials and structures from previous editions. Within the luminous plateaux of the former telephone exchange at Poste Bergère-Trudaine, framed by double-height concrete beams and light-filled courtyards, the result is an exhibition environment where the architecture’s past and present coexist.

all images by Giaime Meloni

Poste Bergère-Trudaine as an urban space

Each year, the fair occupies a different, often transitional building in the French capital, structures caught in an in-between state, awaiting renovation or reuse, and turns them into temporary frameworks for contemporary art. Through this strategy, Paris Internationale confronts one of the city’s most pressing urban conditions, the underutilization and mono-functionality of its architectural stock.

Swiss architecture studio Christ & Gantenbein intervenes using light, reversible systems that interpret the building itself as an urban space. For the 2024 and 2023 editions, the fair was staged inside the historic Poste Bergère-Trudaine, a former telephone exchange complex at 15–17 Rue du Faubourg Poissonnière. Designed in 1911 by François Le Coeur, with later additions from 1919 and 1935, the ensemble combines monumental industrial volumes with art deco ornamentation by sculptor Szabo. Its stripped-down interiors, left bare in anticipation of future renovation, provided a raw, infrastructural backdrop for the fair’s 71 galleries spread over 5,000 square meters.

Christ & Gantenbein develops the exhibition design of Paris Internationale 2023-2024