French architect Jean Nouvel wins Pritzker, architecture’s Nobel Prize
April 3, 2008
2008 Pritzker Prize for Architecture, architecture’s highest honor, awarded to Frenchman Jean Nouvel.
Jean Nouvel has just been announced as the 2008 winner of the Pritzker Architecture Prize, joining such renowned architects as Frank Gehry and I.M. Pei. Nouvel, 62, became the second Pritzker laureate from France; Christian de Portzamparc was the 1994 French recipient.
Frenchman Jean Nouvel first came to international attention in 1987 as the architect of the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris. A research and study facility as well as an exhibition space, the building was one of the famous architecture pet projects of then-President of France Francois Mitterand, and certainly one of the more successful. The gray, angular building sits on the Left Bank just east of the epicenter of Paris. Its many unique features include circular windows whose shades open according to the sun like the pupil of an eye or a camera aperture, to let in natural light.
Over the course of his career, Jean Nouvel has designed more than 200 projects all over the world, including in the US the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis and a 75-story tower next door to the Museum of Modern Art in New York. In Europe, some of Nouvel’s creations are the Agbar tower in Barcelona and Cultural Center in Lucerne, Switzerland. The French architect’s most recent triumph is the new Musee du Quai Branly in Paris.
Currently planned in the US by the French architect, besides the jagged tower alongside New York’s Museum of Modern Art comparable to the Chrysler Building, is a narrow building dubbed the “Green Blade” in the Century City area of Los Angeles. Both are in keeping with Nouvel’s ultra-modern style.
In announcing Jean Nouvel of France as Laureat, Thomas J. Pritzker, chairman of The Hyatt Foundation, noted, “The jury acknowledged the ‘persistence, imagination, exuberance, and, above all, an insatiable urge for creative experimentation’ as qualities abundant in Nouvel’s work.”
No one pointed out that Jean Nouvel’s very name means “new.”
The French architect was surprised to win the award, which was given for the totality of his work rather than, as is more usual, for any specific project. But the originality of Nouvel’s architecture overall is what impressed Pritzker’s jury and is also the raison d’etre of the Frenchman’s creativity. “When you travel the world, you see the same buildings everywhere,” said Nouvel. He added that as an increasingly global society, we must fight even harder against bland uniformity. Nouvel expressed pleasure in being admitted to “the club” of Pritzker architects, citing Gehry, Renzo Piano and Zaha Hadid.
Nouvel grew up in southwest France. A movie fan, he takes architectural inspiration from film, comparing the way he wants people to experience moving through his buildings to a story in a movie.
As a youth, he agreed to pursue a career in architecture to please his parents, who feared he wouldn’t be able to make a living as a visual artist, his first choice.
After Nouvel burst onto the scene with the Institut du Monde Arab, which Pritzker jurors praised for its “modern twist on traditional Arabic latticework,” commissions quickly followed in more than two dozen countries and haven’t stopped since. Nouvel says he begins each project by clearing his mind of previous works and gets inspiration from cultural and environmental forces around the site.
As a Pritzker Laureate, the 62-year-old Nouvel will receive a 100-thousand dollar grant and a bronze medallion. The French architect will receive his prize at a ceremony in Washington on June 2.
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