Art Basel Paris 2025: free exhibition by designer Charles Zana in a sublime Haussmann apartment

Forget white galleries and aseptic cubes - from October 22 to 26, 2025, designer and architect Charles Zana takes over 242 rue de Rivoli(Paris 1er) for Art Basel Paris. In the former Cercle Suédois, a 19th-century apartment of racy beauty, he signs In Situ, a free exhibition open to the public from 11am to 7pm, which brings together architecture, design and contemporary art.

Here, Zana inhabits the space rather than exhibiting it. More than thirty original pieces are displayed in a fluid scenography where each creation finds its rightful place. True to his signature, Zana composes a manifest interior, to be experienced as much as seen. After Ithaque at the Hôtel de Guise (2021) and Iter at the Hôtel de la Marine (2024), In Situ opens a new chapter in his exploration of volume, material and light.

The centerpiece of the space, the Sara, imposes its curve: a monumental six-meter sofa, a sculptural revisitation of the famous Julie model, cast in pewter and designed in an S-shape. A fluid line that structures the space and invites encounters. Surrounding it are a bronze bench, three tables in patinated lacquer created with Pierre Bonnefille, and Carlo mirrors in bronze, a tribute to Carlo Scarpa. The Big Franck, an XXL textured version of the eponymous armchair, combines fabric and patinated bronze, while Attilio's pewter sconces and a series of sculptural plaster sconces diffuse a light that is both graphic and organic.

• To be read
• This week's best deals and highlights in Paris and Île-de-France, from January 26 to February 1, 2026
• Free museums and monuments in Paris and the Ile-de-France region: cultural tips

Here, Zana enriches its palette of materials - bronze, marble, leather, plaster, stainless steel - by integrating lacquer, pewter and ceramics, for a tactile, nuanced and sophisticated harmony. Each texture speaks the language of craftsmanship.

The exhibition closes with a cabinet of curiosities from the designer's personal collection, featuringworks and objects collected over time: a glimpse into the designer's influences and obsessions.

Trained at the Beaux-Arts in Paris and inspired by the Italian masters (Gio Ponti, Ettore Sottsass, Andrea Branzi, Enzo Mari, Carlo Scarpa), Charles Zana has been perfecting the art of dressing spaces with meaning and material for three decades. With In Situ, he offers a manifesto in which every volume and every material finds its evidence - design as experience, and space as emotion.