These are the best design exhibitions to see in Paris this week

This week, Paris is dominated by an array of art moments as Art Basel Paris and Design Miami Paris return for their third instalment after the 2023 debut in the city. Across the French capital's historical venues, from hotels particuliers to landmark apartments, collectible design finds a place to show its most experimental side, with multidisciplinary cross-pollination opportunities that range from textile-like treatment of solid surfaces to music merging with design.

Here, we round up the best design exhibitions to see in Paris as Art Basel and Design Miami both land in the city.

Paris design exhibitions to discover this week

A triple bill by India Mahdavi

This week, India Mahdavi stages three collaborative exhibitions: with AGO Projects, a display of Kauani's Parenchyma cactus-shaped sculptural lights in her Project Room, 'an intimate study of xerophytic plants endemic to the American continen', and an exhibition of chairs by Serban Ionescu in her Tiny Room gallery space. Ionescu's anthropomorphic chairs reflect his Balkan origins: drawing from ancient vernacular, 'I treat wood like drawing or clay, improvised and direct, embracing all accidents,' says the designer.

With culinary collective We Are Ona, she also presents Rose C'est La Vie, a flower-clad restaurant pop-up with Mexican chef Jesús Durón, whose name is a nod to Marcel Duchamp's female alter ego, Rrose Sélavy, and whose interiors reference the Mahdavi-designed iconic APT club in New York.

Project Room #20, 29 rue de Bellechasse, 75007
Tiny Room #7, 3 rue las Cases, 75007

Charles Zana's In Situ furniture collection

Charles Zana presents his new In Situ furniture collection in a 500-square-metre Directoire apartment that formerly housed the Swedish Circle (and where Alfred Nobel established the awards that bear his name). Located on the Rue de Rivoli, overlooking the Tuileries gardens, the apartment has impressively high ceilings and large reception rooms. 'You feel like you've stepped into another era,' Zana says.

Instead of creating rooms for dining, entertaining, sleeping, etc., Zana has mixed up his works in what he calls a 'fantasy' interior, creating 'an emotion rather than simply an aesthetic.' The exhibition includes a coffee bar run by pastry star Yann Couvreur where you can sip an espresso at a 'Cocteau' mushroom-shaped side table while listening to the chill techno sounds of Sébastien Tellier and Ray Mang. Text by Amy Serafin

'In Situ' runs 21-26 October 2025, 242 Rue de Rivoli, Paris

Contributions

Curated by design industry veterans Anna Caradeuc and Élise Daunay, the Contributions design festival returns to Paris for its second edition. With a set up that encourages dialogues between design and other creative disciplines, the festival's 2025 edition weaves together design and music, with five installations pairing artists, designers and musicians.

The projects on display include Nifemi Marcus-Bello's first Paris presentation, a new iteration of his M2 Shelf with an integrated speaker created in collaboration with La Boîte Concept - a design reminiscent of the living room in his family home growing up, scaled up into a listening room with a soundtrack by Brazilian musician Rodrigo Amarante.

Elsewhere, Italian musician Andrea Laszlo De Simone presents the premiere of his audiovisual piece Una Lunghissima Ombra, accompanied by natural wine bar and micro-cinema Out of the blue byFrench design advisor and dealer Harold Mollet recreating the convivial spirit of an Italian bar with pieces by design collective Metals.

On view until 24 October across different locations:

Union de la Jeunesse Internationale, 2-4 blvd Rocheouart, 75018
Atelier Alterio, 57bis blvd Rocheouart, 75009
Out of the blue, 9 rue Saint Maur, 75011
La Pièce, 24 rue Camille Desmoulins, 75011
Lucid Interval, 94 rue Quincampoix, 75003

Salon des Nouveaux Ensembliers

The Galerie des Gobelins hosts the inaugural Salon des Nouveaux Ensembliers, under the patronage of France’s manufactures nationales – Sèvres and Mobilier national. In the lineage of art deco’s pioneers, the salon gathers a new generation of interior architects invited to rethink the dialogue between form, function and meaning in contemporary living.

Under the theme ‘L’Ambassade de demain’ (the embassy of tomorrow), ten architect-decorators (nine French and one Brazilian) reinterpret the symbolic spaces of diplomacy: offices, vestibules, salons and reception rooms.

Their brief is as pertinent as it is ambitious: how can design today embody representation, openness and exchange, while embracing ecological and social responsibility? Each designer has imagined an experimental embassy space, selecting one specific area within the building as the framework for their vision. These embassies function as both interiors and laboratories of ideas, exploring diplomacy as a contemporary art of encounter. Text: Fabienne Dupuis

Le Salon des Nouveaux Ensembliers is on view at Galerie des Gobelins until 2 November 2025. 42 Av. des Gobelins, 75013 Paris

Salon 94 Design presents Massimiliano Locatelli & Fabio Zambernardi's Nullus Locus

Installed within Locatelli’s private Paris apartment, this collection of objects created by the studio and Fabio Zambernardi with Graziano Ricami features embroidery on timber. Becoming unexpected tapestries, wooden vessels and furniture pieces becomes a canvas for floral embroidery, brought to life by the skilled techniques and machinery developed by Graziano Giordani.

By appointment only

‘Un Souffle De Vent’ by Yves Salomon Editions X Dimorestudio

Dimorestudio and Yves Salomon Editions present a new immersive installation inspired by Georges Perec’s debut novel Les Choses, a text rich with descriptions of opulent interiors. Similarly, the objects and furniture on display are meant to be contemplated, rather than used, with Dimorestudio's narrative approach to design developed through tactile surfaces, a rich material palette and a mood that exudes a decorative richness while embodying a minimalism of form.

On view until 26 October 2025, 5, rue Castiglione, 75001

'In The Mood for Touch' by Nilufar at Métaphores

Nilufar Edition and high-end textile company Métaphores present an immersive installation that reflects the tactile and emotional potential of interiors. Works by Nilufar Edition are paired with examples of Métaphores' textile excellence, crafting 'a sensual, atmospheric world where every surface speaks a language of materiality and craft.'

On view from 23 October 2025 to January 2026, 5 Rue de Furstemberg, 75006