The new headquarters of the North American Center of Paris will be built in Bercy, east of the French capital. A glance at the successive models (which start with raw wood and end in a disturbing golan-like décor), a review of plans and sections, and a glance at the drawings give us a glimpse of Frank Gehry's problems and attitudes towards this commission, conceived as an export of American architecture to the Old Continent.

It is a compact urban building, dedicated to the mix of uses characteristic of a cultural center, to be packed into a block of Paris-Bercy. There is a certain fragmentation in two main volumes, linked by a low body, but the will of formal modeling is not based on the different uses or functions, but rather on a random treatment of the surfaces and peripheral elements: canopies, skylights and signs...[+]