On Saturday, October 17, Large opened its doors on Île Seguin, adding a new contemporary-art destination to the western edge of Greater Paris. The six-storey centre occupies the former industrial island once dominated by Renault, turning a site associated with assembly lines into one devoted to exhibitions, commissions and public exchange.
Designed by RCR Arquitectes, winner of the 2017 Pritzker Prize, with the Paris studio CALQ, the building contains 5,000 square metres of floor space. Half is dedicated to exhibitions, including a 1,000-square-metre hall beneath a 14-metre ceiling. Filtered light, metallic surfaces and long views across the Seine shape the visitor’s route, while an atrium, bookshop, children’s workshop and panoramic café extend the programme beyond the galleries.
A centre built around access
Large presents itself as a non-profit institution focused on artists living or working in France. Forty per cent of the building is accessible without a ticket, and admission to exhibitions is free for visitors under 26. The opening also completes a major stage in the Pointe des Arts redevelopment, placing visual art beside La Seine Musicale, a cinema and a riverside sculpture park.
Its arrival follows decades of abandoned plans for Île Seguin. Renault closed the plant in 1992, and several cultural projects proposed for the site failed to materialise. Large therefore opens not simply as another private initiative near Paris, but as the most visible result yet of a long attempt to reconnect the island’s industrial memory with public culture. Condé Nast Traveler’s opening-day report also highlights the centre’s unusual mix of monumental galleries and freely accessible social spaces.
Machines as memory and metaphor
The inaugural exhibition, Moteur Imaginaire, gives that history a critical rather than nostalgic frame. Curated by Cecilia Alemani, it brings together more than 100 works by 55 artists from 23 countries. Historical pieces from the Renault collection—formed through collaborations between artists, engineers and factory workers—appear alongside 17 new commissions.
Across five sections, the exhibition follows the machine from factory tool to social system, object of desire and instrument of algorithmic control. Works by Arman, Jean Dubuffet, Victor Vasarely and Jean Tinguely revisit the experimental encounters that Renault encouraged from the late 1960s. Contemporary commissions by artists including Bianca Bondi, Giulia Andreani and Mohamed El Khatib shift attention toward labour, migration, ecology and the body.
A review published by Le Monde on opening day describes a route that moves from industrial experimentation to the lives of workers, then on to the car’s political and emotional meanings. That breadth makes Moteur Imaginaire an unusually precise opening statement: Large is using the history beneath its foundations as material for questioning the technologies and institutions shaping the present.
Moteur Imaginaire runs through March 7, 2027. Large is open Wednesday to Sunday, with late opening on Fridays. The inaugural weekend offered free entry with advance registration, making public access part of the institution’s first gesture rather than a promise deferred to future programming.
Image credit: Large, Île Seguin, Boulogne-Billancourt, France. © RCR Arquitectes – G. Trégouët / CALQ architecture agency. Photograph © Nicolas Trouillard. Official press asset made available for HD download on Renault Group’s media site for the Moteur Imaginaire press materials; no editorial modification.