The Fondation Louis Vuitton for Creation, a magical and enchanting building designed by Frank Gehry at the request of Bernard Arnault, President of the LVMH group, was inaugurated in October 2014 in the heart of the Bois de Boulogne in Paris.

A masterpiece of architectural design, the Fondation Louis Vuitton has met a host of technological challenges that have necessitated six years of work, involving some 120 architects and engineers. The Fondation Louis Vuitton building sits beneath a majestic composition of large glass sails. The opaque facades, grouped in "icebergs", needed to be a brilliant white, forming a perfect fit on a highly complex geometry, while guaranteeing outstanding durability as requested by the Client for the whole building. We have taken part in this extraordinary adventure and tackled the challenge by proposing a material that meets the architect's aesthetic and technical expectations.

The technical challenge posed by the random geometry of the 9,000 m² facade of the Fondation Louis Vuitton was met by manufacturing 19,000 Ductal® panels of which 16,000 with varying curvatures. Ductal® Envelope rapidly proved itself the only material capable of meeting the expectations of this project due to its ultra-high performance in terms of durability, surface quality, thin panel thicknesses, casting-based manufacture and ductility. It has the important advantage of being able to withstand significant deformations without failure. Its organic fiber formula gives it a mineral materiality that is produced here in a very thin layer, just 25 mm, thus guaranteeing maximum weight reduction of the group of panels lining the facade.

While the material met the project's expectations, a process still had to be designed to enable industrial-scale manufacture of the 16,000 cladding panels, with random 3D geometries, and to fit them to the curve of the 9,000 m2 facade. It was obviously not feasible to make a number of moulds equal to the number of different geometries. Ductal® was able to propose an effective technical solution based on its considerable experience in materials manufacture and laying.

We therefore developed the Vacuum Moulding (VM) process patented by LafargeHolcim in 2008. This process uses a unique flexible mould that can be adapted to fit any curve. The desired geometry is provided by a CNC-machined polystyrene template: the deformable mould is positioned on this template using a combination of vacuum pockets. The flexible silicone mould provides a perfectly smooth, velvety surface with the result that each panel can be given a potentially unique curve, while still enabling Bonna Sabla, the partner precasting company, to limit the number of moulds used - a critical factor in the manufacturing cost. Manufacturing and fitting tolerances were especially challenging: the inter-panel horizontal joint is 10mm, while the vertical joint is only 7mm. These limitations required the precaster to set up a strict geometry control process. Manufacturing expertise, combined with the fixing system proposed by the RFR and TESS facade design offices, ensured perfect visual continuity between the joints.

The aesthetic appeal of the 9,000m2 Ductal® panel facade is a fundamental component of the Frank Gehry project. Being displayed on the facade means that the panels are exposed to all types of weather, as well as to dirt and deposits, etc. In order to guarantee the skin's high durability, a water and oil repellent protection solution proposed by our partner Guard Industrie underwent extensive testing in their laboratory. Guard Industrie carried out UV weathering tests, XX and even tested the effect of bird droppings, given that the wood is full of birds! A sacrificial anti-graffiti coating has been applied in areas accessible to the public. This protection and finish therefore play a major role in ensuring long-lasting preservation of the aesthetic features that Ductal® offers the Fondation Louis Vuitton.