Institut du Monde Arabe

Landmark · Quai Saint-Bernard / Jussieu (5th)Paris,France

Paris's museum and centre for the Arab world, behind a south wall of 240 metal screens whose irises open and shut like camera shutters.

The Institut du monde arabe is Paris's museum and cultural centre for the Arab world, and its south wall is the reason most people notice the building. It is made of 240 metal screens, each a grid of irises that open and shut like a camera shutter. Inside are galleries of Arab art, a library, exhibition halls and an auditorium. A lift runs to an open terrace on the ninth floor, level with the rooftops, and from there you look across the river at the east end of Notre-Dame and its ring of flying buttresses. The wall was supposed to work like an eye. Light sensors would open and close the irises with the sun, so the south face changed through the day. It never really did. The mechanism failed in the early 2000s and the screens stood still for about fifteen years, which is how most people who came in that time remember them. Engineers rebuilt every panel in 2017 and they move again — but slowly, at set moments, rather than with the sun. To catch them working you have to be there at the right hour rather than simply turning up.

Worth knowing

Good to know

Go up to the rooftop terrace first — It is open air and needs no ticket. It closes in bad weather and is sometimes hired out for private events, so you cannot count on finding it open.
The permanent collection is being rebuilt — The institute is redesigning the museum floors and the new galleries are years off, so treat the collection as uncertain. The wall and the terrace are unaffected.
Approach from the square behind the building, away from the river — The panelled wall faces away from the Seine, so walking the quay shows you only the curved glass side of the building.
Photograph the cathedral in the morning — From the terrace you face north-west, so the sun is behind you and lands on the buttresses. By evening you shoot into the light.
The library is the quietest room in the building — Its reading rooms are open to anyone, full of people working, and far calmer than the exhibition floors.

Things to do

1
Pick out the back of Notre-Dame from nine floors up
Take the lift to the top floor and step out onto the open terrace. Turn towards the river and look north-west. About six hundred metres away you see the east end of Notre-Dame. This is the half-ring of flying buttresses that photographs taken from the front never show. Behind the cathedral the right bank of the Seine stretches away.
2
Study one metal window screen from arm's length
Walk right up to the wall on the square and pick one screen. At arm's length you see a large central opening that works like the iris of a camera, rings of smaller ones around it, and the machined metal edge of every opening. Step back thirty paces and the whole wall flattens into one patterned surface.
3
Find the circles of light the wall throws indoors
Come in through the main doors on a sunny day and look at the floor of the entrance hall. The wall behind you is the window, so the light arrives as hundreds of small circles falling on stone, on walls and on your hands. Move one step and the whole pattern slides.