Paris Design Week 2026: 4 Monumental Installations Not to Miss in September

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Paris Design Week 2026: 4 Monumental Installations Not to Miss in September

Once again this year, Paris's most iconic heritage sites are joyfully disrupted by contemporary creation.

Every autumn, design feels right at home in Paris. A free urban offshoot of the Maison&Objet trade fair, the Paris Design Week (PDW) spreads across hundreds of venues from the Marais to Bastille, attracting some 250,000 visitors — no badge or invitation required. But its most spectacular programme unfolds on a grander scale: with "Design sur cour" (Courtyard Design), the city's most eloquent monuments are reimagined by a handpicked troupe of creators, artists and design houses invited to work in situ. These aren't exhibitions simply placed in a space — they are works tailor-made for their settings. The Arc de Triomphe, the July Column, the Grand Palais... From 10 to 19 September 2026, Paris's heritage lends its finest finery to contemporary creation. Here are four must-(re)visit installations to add colour to your autumn.

Jeremy Pradier-Jeauneau at the Arc de Triomphe — "La Tempête"

At the 2025 edition, he made waves with Labyrinthe, a poetic promenade inside the Hôtel de la Marine. This year, Jérémy Pradier-Jeauneau — a former film producer turned designer with a flair for theatricality — takes on the Arc de Triomphe with an exhibition conceived as immersive fiction. With La Tempête (The Tempest), he transforms the ascent of the monument into an initiatory journey: a dizzying succession of artist-created works accompanies the visitor's progression through the building, from its base to the summit. The highlight is a heritage milestone: the acroterion — the crowning section, long bereft of its originally planned sculptural group — will open to the public for the first time since the monument's inauguration in 1836. A theatre of objects like no other.

Uchronia at the Grand Palais — "Grand Bouquet"

A familiar face returns to PDW: Julien Sebban, founder of Uchronia, is a standard-bearer of bold, explosive and unapologetically pop French design. Throughout his creations, he cultivates a single motif with remarkable persistence: the flower. After bringing a monumental inflatable bouquet to Coachella last year, he now draws inspiration from the historic décor of the Rotonde d'Antin at the Grand Palais to imagine a new Grand Bouquet, around which visitors can sit and linger. A resolutely optimistic installation that celebrates both joy and French craftsmanship. The experience extends to the Grand Palais boutique, where a selection of objects (candleholders, notebooks, plates) and furniture pieces from the Grand Bouquet universe will be available for purchase.

Anthony Guerrée at the Musée Bourdelle — "Contrepoint"

A major new addition (and excellent news): the Musée Bourdelle joins the PDW circuit this year. This is a chance to rediscover the sculptor's former workshops — where Bourdelle trained, among others, Giacometti and Germaine Richier — among the most precious (and surprisingly under-the-radar) art spaces in the capital. Here, Anthony Guerrée creates a dialogue between his own work and Bourdelle's. A fitting challenge: he previously designed chairs for Proust's characters (Les Assises du temps perdu — The Seats of Lost Time), and for him every object is a "fragment of history waiting to be told." With Contrepoint (Counterpoint), the designer playfully extracts lines, curves and tensions from the master's sculptures and lets them reappear elsewhere: on a stained-glass screen, the jacquard of a chaise longue, or in terracotta. An exhibition that weaves itself, in counterpoint yet perfect harmony, through the museum's permanent collections and into its gardens.

Studio 5.5 at the July Column — "Re-prise de la Bastille"

For over twenty years, the collective represented here by Claire Renard and Jean-Sébastien Blanc has made creative reuse a founding principle — as early as 2004, their Réanim project fitted broken chairs with fluorescent prosthetics in the name of an "object medicine" — often weaving political ideas into their work. The Place de la Bastille is a fitting stage. With Re-prise de la Bastille (Retaking the Bastille), they gently prod the revolutionary memory of this landmark by creating a manifesto installation composed of 196 hand-sewn flags made entirely from discarded clothing: 195 represent UN member and observer states, joined by a single white flag. Hoisted on six-metre poles encircling the July Column, these banners form an immense patchwork of the world, conceived as much as a call for peaceful coexistence as an appeal for textile reuse.