Frank Gehry's architecture of over-indulgence

Funded by the richest man in France the architect's, new art museum and an accompanying retrospective at Pompidou reveal the danger of big budgets.

At the exit of Les Sablons Metro station, in a well-heeled western suburb of Paris, stands a brown tourist sign that appears to have been misprinted. Next to the recognisable fairground silhouettes of merry-go-rounds and swings, advertising the nearby Jardin d'Acclimatation, is a mess of white blotches. If you screw your eyes up, it looks like a chrysalis, or a strange beetle. This way to the insect house, perhaps?

It is, in fact, a sign for the latest building by Frank Gehry — the Fondation Louis Vuitton — which has landed in the woodland park of the Bois de Boulogne as an avalanche of glass sails. Piled up in a staggered heap, these great curved shields twist and turn in the architect's trademark style, their odd angles poking above the trees, visible for miles around.

As if caught in a violent storm, the sails flare open in places to reveal an inner world of white walls, sculpted like whipped meringue, and a dense thicket of steel struts and wooden beams that have been forced into improbable shapes.