“Since the beginning of his architectural career in the 1970s, Frenchman Jean Nouvel has broken the aesthetic of modernism and post-modernism to create a stylistic language all his own. He places enormous importance on designing a building harmonious with its surroundings,” said Bill Lacy in his book, One Hundred Contemporary Architects. Lacy, who was executive director of the Pritzker Architecture Prize from 1988 until 2005 when he retired, continued, “In the end that building’s design may borrow from traditional and non-traditional forms, but its presentation is entirely unique.”

Jean Nouvel’s projects transform the landscapes in which they are built, often becoming major urban events in their own right. His unique approach, driven by the specificities of context, program, and site has proven effective in numerous successes around the world.

One such success, a building that first brought Nouvel international recognition is the Institut du Monde Arabe (IMA) in Paris where one of its facades is made entirely of mechanical oculi operated by photoelectric cells that automatically open and close in response to light levels. The French critic, Alain de Gourcuff, said of it, “The overall effect is at once highly decorative in a Middle Eastern way and projects state-of-the-art electronics.”

Commissioned in 1981 as one of the first Grand Projects initiated by President Francois Mitterand, IMA was completed in 1987 and consists of a museum, a library, temporary exhibit spaces, children’s workshops, a documentation center, an auditorium and a rooftop restaurant. A+U described the building as “a modern western building that pays tribute to Arabic culture.”

The Arab World Institute is just one of more than two hundred projects by Jean Nouvel that the Pritzker Architecture Prize Jury has singled out in its formal citation.

The Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, Minnesota is another of the projects mentioned in the citation. The Pritzker Jury says of the Guthrie, “The iconic Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, Minnesota both merges and contrasts with its surroundings. It is responsive to the city and the nearby Mississippi River, and yet, it is also an expression of theatricality and the magical world of performance.”

That “theatricality” is no accident. Nouvel has often compared his role as architect to that of the film director. In an interview published in El Croquis in 2002, he said, “Everything is theatrical. I have worked for a long time as a scenographer, even on social housing ... scenography is the relationship between objects and matter that we want to display to somebody who is watching. In effect, in every building there is a way of proving a three-hundred-and-sixty degree view over the landscape, as in Lucerne. The use of the word scenography doesn’t bother me as long as it is used in the right sense.” In other interviews, he has often said that architecture and the cinema are very close.

“Architecture exists, like cinema, in a dimension of time and movement. One thinks, conceives and reads a building in terms of sequences. To erect a building is to predict and seek effects of contrast and linkage bound up with the succession of spaces through which one passes,” Nouvel explains.

The reference to Lucerne is to his Cultural and Conference Center completed in 2000 in that Swiss city. Nouvel has described it as “an example of the principle of framing the landscape. It is a building on an exceptional site, by the lake, facing the town. The entire town can be seen from the foyer.”

The Lucerne Cultural and Conference Center along with the Cartier Foundation in Paris are two more of Nouvel’s completed projects that the Pritzker Jury mentions in their citation as making “dematerialization palpable.” The citation calls attention to Nouvel’s Endless Tower, a 400-meter-high structure for Paris intended to be the tallest building in Europe. For the jury, that project’s importance was “the building’s skin, which changed materials as it progressed upward—from granite to aluminum to stainless steel to glass—becoming increasingly diaphanous before disappearing into the sky.”

Although that tower has never been realized, Nouvel has a project underway in New York City, a mixed use tower next door to the Museum of Modern Art, called Tour de Verre. It was also recently announced that he has designed a high-rise condominium, Suncal Tower, for the Century City area of Los Angeles.

In the book titled Jean Nouvel: Elements of Architecture, Conway Lloyd Morgan writes, “Nouvel’s buildings engage our interest through their consistency of purpose, within the range of their visual or technical complexities. Very often the sequence of impressions one of his buildings creates—from distance to detail, through the arrangement, proportions, and linking of interior elements, in the handling of mass and façade, by the use of color and light—works in harmonious parallel with the purposes and functions of the building: the qualities of commodity, firmness and delight cited centuries ago by Vitruvius.”

The Vitruvius reference was perhaps prophetic. It refers to Ten Books on Architecture dedicated some 2000 years ago to the Roman Emperor Augustus, which Henry Wotton in his 1624 treatise, The Elements of Architecture, translated as: “The end is to build well. Well-building hath three conditions: commodity, firmness and delight.” Those three words, “firmness, commodity and delight,” are inscribed on the Pritzker Medal.

In his own words, Nouvel says, “Critics have defined me as a conceptual architect, that is, one who works more with words than with drawings. I mistrust drawings as fixing things too early in the creative process, while words liberate. I believe the architect is a man who says something.”

Nouvel was born in Fumel in southwestern France in 1945, the son of Roger Nouvel, a history teacher who went on to become the chief county school superintendent, and Renée Nouvel, a high school English teacher. His father’s duties in administration required them to move around frequently, and by the time Jean was eight, they moved to Sarlat, a place Nouvel characterizes as a “medieval town with a lot of architecture.” In those years, he confesses he often slipped out to go to the cinema, an influence that would become important in later years. He was sixteen before one of his professors taught him to draw and truly introduced him to the arts. Up to that time, his parents had placed great emphasis on mathematics and languages. He feels that they were steering him toward a career in education or engineering. When he told them he would like to attend the Beaux Arts school, they objected. A compromise was reached that he would study architecture because being an artist was too risky. Although he failed an entry exam for a school in Bordeaux, when he was twenty, he went to Paris and won first prize in a national competition to attend Beaux Arts there. To earn money while going to school, he took a job in the architecture practice of Claude Parent and Paul Virilio. After being with them for only a year, he was made project manager for an eighty-unit apartment complex. By the time he was 25, he had finished school and had his own office in partnership with François Seigneur.

Nouvel credits Parent with guiding jobs to his fledgling office, and perhaps even more importantly, with recommending him for the job of director of the Paris Biennale, which allowed Nouvel to design exhibits for some fifteen years, and make many contacts in the art and theater worlds.

From 1972 to 1984, Nouvel was successively associated with Gilbert Lezenes, Jean-Francois Guyot and Pierre Soria. In 1985, he concurrently founded Jean Nouvel et Associés with three of his junior project architects: Emmanuel Blamont, Jean-Marc Ibos and Mirto Vitart. In 1988, he formed with Emmanuel Cattani, JNEC. Some six years later, in 1994, he created his current firm, Ateliers Jean Nouvel, with Michel Pélissié. His main office in Paris today consists of some 140 people, one of the largest architectural practices in France.

In addition, Ateliers Jean Nouvel has site offices in London, Copenhagen, New York, Rome, Madrid and Barcelona. They count over 40 active projects in 13 countries. The firm has built museums, concert halls, conference centers, theaters, hotels, collective housing, office buildings, commercial centers, and private residences around the world. Jean Nouvel has two sons with Odile Fillion, who is a filmmaker. Bertrand, his first born in 1979, is currently doing his post-doctorate work in computer science at the University of Chiba in Japan. Pierre, who was born in 1981, is a director, producer and theater designer at Factoid, his own company. Jean Nouvel also has a daughter, Sarah, born in 1994 to his second wife, Catherine Richard. He currently lives with the Swedish architect Mia Hagg whose practice called Habiter Autrement (HA) is in Paris.

Jean Nouvel of France Becomes the 2008 Pritzker Architecture Prize Laureate

Jean Nouvel of Paris, France has been chosen as the 2008 Laureate of the Pritzker Architecture Prize. The formal ceremony for what has come to be known throughout the world as architecture’s highest honor will be held on June 2 in Washington, D.C. at the Library of Congress. At that time, a $100,000 grant and a bronze medallion will be bestowed on the 62-year old architect.

Nouvel who came to international attention with the completion of his Institut du Monde Arabe (usually referred to as IMA) in 1987 as one of President Francois Mitterand’s Grands Travaux in Paris, now has several projects in the United States, including the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis completed in 2006, a 75-story tower (Tour Verre) next door to MOMA in New York, and recently announced plans for a high rise condominium (Suncal Tower) in the Century City district of Los Angeles. In Europe, some of his other important works are the Cartier Foundation for Contemporary Art (Paris 1994), the Branly Museum (Paris 2006), the Agbar Tower (Barcelona 2005), a Courthouse (Nantes 2000), a Cultural and Conference Center (Lucerne 2000), an Opera House (Lyon 1993), and Expo 2002 (Switzerland). Also currently under construction is a concert hall in Copenhagen.

Although the bulk of his work is in France, he has designed projects all over the world, including Japan, Spain, England, the Netherlands, Austria, Italy, Czech Republic, Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg, Korea, Mexico, Israel, Brazil, Qatar, Lebanon, Cyprus, Iceland, UAE, Taiwan, Malaysia, Portugal, Kuwait, Morocco, Russia and the U.S.—well over two hundred in all.

In announcing the jury’s choice, Thomas J. Pritzker, chairman of The Hyatt Foundation, quoted from the jury citation, “Of the many phrases that might be used to describe the career of architect Jean Nouvel, foremost are those that emphasize his courageous pursuit of new ideas and his challenge of accepted norms in order to stretch the boundaries of the field.” And further, Pritzker added, “The jury acknowledged the ‘persistence, imagination, exuberance, and, above all, an insatiable urge for creative experimentation’ as qualities abundant in Nouvel’s work.”

 

In Nouvel’s own words, “My interest has always been in an architecture which reflects the modernity of our epoch as opposed to the rethinking of historical references. My work deals with what is happening now—our techniques and materials, what we are capable of doing today.”

Pritzker Prize jury chairman, Lord Palumbo elaborated with more of the citation: “Since establishing his Paris based practice in the 1970s, Nouvel has pushed himself, as well as those around him, to consider new approaches to conventional architectural problems.

For Nouvel, in architecture there is no “style” a priori. Rather, a context, interpreted in the broadest sense to include culture, location, program and client, provokes him to develop a different strategy for each project.”

Nouvel is the second laureate to be chosen from France, the first being Christian de Portzamparc in 1994. Although 2008 marks the thirtieth anniversary, he is the thirty-second laureate since the prize was founded in 1979. There were two laureates chosen in 1988 and again in 2001.

 

Read Stefano Casciani's Essay

Of the many phrases that might be used to describe the career of architect Jean Nouvel, foremost are those that emphasize his courageous pursuit of new ideas and his challenge of accepted norms in order to stretch the boundaries of the field. For over 30 years, Jean Nouvel has pushed architecture’s discourse and praxis to new limits. His inquisitive and agile mind propels him to take risks in each of his projects, which, regardless of varying degrees of success, have greatly expanded the vocabulary of contemporary architecture.

Since establishing his Paris-based practice in the 1970s, Nouvel has pushed himself, as well as those around him, to consider new approaches to conventional architectural problems. He is not interested in a unified approach or accepted typologies. He likes ruptures of scale and form that move the viewer from one aesthetic sensibility to another. “I am glad if a project can be ten thousand projects simultaneously,” Nouvel has said.

The manipulation of light and of layers of transparency and opacity are recurring themes in Nouvel’s work. His Institut du Monde Arabe (Arab World Institute), built in Paris 1987, was designed with adjustable metal lenses embedded in its south-facing glass façade to control light to the interior, a modern twist on traditional Arab latticework. His Tour Sans Fins (Endless Tower) was selected as the winning entry of a 1989 competition to construct a skyscraper in the La Defense area near Paris. More important than the height of the proposed 400–meter high structure, intended, at the time, to be the tallest tower in Europe, was the building’s skin, which changed materials as it progressed upward—from granite to aluminum to stainless steel to glass—becoming increasingly diaphanous before disappearing into the sky. Here, as with the KKL Luzern (Cultural and Conference Center) of 2000 in Lucerne and the Fondation Cartier pour l’art Contemporain (Cartier Foundation for Contemporary Art) of 1994 in Paris, dematerialization is made palpable.

For Nouvel, in architecture there is no “style” a priori. Rather, context, interpreted in the broadest sense to include culture, location, program, and client, provokes him to develop a different strategy for each project. The iconic Guthrie Theater (2006) in Minneapolis, Minnesota both merges and contrasts with its surroundings. It is responsive to the city and the nearby Mississippi River, and yet, it is also an expression of theatricality and the magical world of performance.

In his recently completed Musée du Quai Branly (Quai Branly Museum) for Paris’s significant collection of indigenous art of Africa, Oceania, Asia, and the Americas, Nouvel designed a bold, unorthodox building with unusual spaces in which objects are displayed—and understood—in new ways. Many of the materials used in the interiors, including wall and ceiling decorations by native artists, evoke the countries of their origin.

We, as a jury, recognize that architecture is a field of many challenges and complexities and that the career of an architect does not always follow a linear path. In the case of Jean Nouvel, we particularly admire the spirit of the journey—persistence, imagination, exuberance, and, above all, an insatiable urge for creative experimentation—qualities that are abundant in the work of the 2008 Pritzker Architecture Prize Laureate. 

 

Jury Members

Lord Palumbo (Chairman)
Shigeru Ban
Rolf Fehlbaum
Carlos Jimenez
Victoria Newhouse
Renzo Piano
Karen Stein
Martha Thorne (Executive Director)

The Thomas Jefferson Building of the Library of Congress, Washington D.C.

The Library of Congress building, today known as the Thomas Jefferson Building, was opened in 1897 and touted as "the largest, the costliest, and the safest" library building in the world and a national temple to the arts.

In response to the rapid and substantial growth of the holdings and mission of the Library, a competition for the design of a new Library building was held in 1873. After many proposals and much controversy, construction of a new Library building was authorized in 1886, using designs inspired by the Italian Renaiassance prepared by Washington architects John L. Smithmeyer and Paul J. Pelz. Others later involved in the design and construction included General Thomas Lincoln Casey, chief of the Army Corps of Engineers, his chief assistant Bernard R. Green, and beginning in 1892, his son, Edward Pearce Casey, who supervised the interior work and its elaborate decoration.

Striking architectural features of this Beaux-Arts building include the double staircase rising to the arcaded entrance, the pairs of giant columns supporting the portico, and the dome of copper crowning the building. The scale of the Library matched that of the largest libraries in Europe of its time.

The 2008 Pritzker Architecture Prize used the Great Hall for much of the celebration. This space, constructed of white Italian marble, rises 75 feet high. Two grand staircases flank the hall and lead to the upper level where the dinner was held. The colorful interior decoration, undertaken by numerous American painters and sculptors, is akin to the ornate and classically inspired decoration used at the “Great White City”—the Columbian Exposition of 1893 in Chicago. 

 

Read Jean Nouvel's Ceremony Acceptance Speech

Read Tom Pritzker's Ceremony Speech

Read Lord Peter Palumbo's Ceremony Speech

Read Martha Thorne's Ceremony Speech

 

Library of Congress

Ceremony Highlights

Full Ceremony