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Foreigner – Immigrant – Emigrant – Expatriate – Stateless – Undocumented – Illegal immigrant – Refugee – Asylum-seeker – Outcast – Exile – Harraga – Displaced – Immigrant background – Of immigrant origin – Beur –… All these words express and designate the “Other”, the one arriving, the one living here. As is the case when numbers guide our thinking, words sort the desirable from the undesirable. Words express the world, convey/betray how it is perceived, create the foundations for hospitalities or suspicions.

The Palais de la Porte Dorée is home to many ironwork decorations designed by renowned decorators, key figures in the artistic ironwork of the 1930s. Nowadays they can mainly be found in the circulation areas of the Palais.

The floor of the Hall of Honour, the Forum, the auditorium and the Marie-Curie Hall on the ground floor of the Palais de la Porte Dorée is covered with mosaics stretching over 2,500 m². These were made by the Établissements Gentil & Bourdet, founded in 1901 by the two ceramist-architects Alphonse Gentil (1872-1933) and François Bourdet (1874-1952).

A key figure in Art Deco aesthetics, Jacques-Émile Ruhlmann, one of the most famous decorators of the 1930s, designed all the furniture in the Africa Salon at the Palais de la Porte Dorée, the state room which, during the 1931 Colonial Exposition, served as the reception office of the Minister of the Colonies, Paul Reynaud.