Giver of forms
Jean Nouvel by Jean Nouvel. Complete Works 1970-2008. Excerpt from the essay by Philip Jodidio
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Nouvel is not conservative, he is a risk-taker by nature, but his art has consisted in expanding the envelope of architectural possibilities while respecting programmatic or budgetary requirements. Surrounded by good friends like the publisher Hubert Tonka, Nouvel indulges in a theoretical discourse that may be more French than international, but his buildings are French in the positive, pragmatic sense, in the way the country would like to see itself in the modern era. Indeed, a part of France is truly modern and pragmatic, and an architect like Jean Nouvel is the living proof of this fact. A man of contemporary spirit, Nouvel has not attained the status of national hero given by the Dutch to a Rem Koolhaas, but that may be because his country often fears contemporary art and architecture, reputed to be shallow, insulting, or aggressive toward the past.
He plays on the ambiguity between façade and interior, between reflections and more substantive realities
What Jean Nouvel has attained, even if it has been less noticed in France than might be the case, is the status of an international "star" – an architect whose work is both admired and accepted in countries from the United States to Japan, and most places between. A capacity to build in the complex historical circumstances of a city like Paris does not guarantee similar success on the waterside Corniche in Doha, and yet that is exactly the kind of dichotomy that Jean Nouvel has managed with a typically French aplomb. Though he seeks by no means to be an "official" architect of his country, rather it might be said that he would reject such a notion, Jean Nouvel has nonetheless emerged as the quintessential French architect.
One of the ways in which Jean Nouvel navigates between the extremes of brutality and sophistication in his architecture is through the refined use of ambiguity. Very often the viewer or user of one of his buildings is taken aback by certain features, and yet reassured by others. There are stairways and windows and they are more or less where they might be expected to be, and yet there is also an astonishing overhanging roof, as is the case in his buildings in Tours or Lucerne, or a scene from a movie on the ceiling of a hotel room (Lucerne). This man who dresses in black is affectionate of this product of the combined colors of the spectrum, using it in the Lyon Opera House or the Nantes Law Courts to great effect. Reflective or opaque, black is symbolic of the unknown, of fundamental ambiguity. So too, when Nouvel uses architectural-scale glass screens as he does at the Fondation Cartier, or the Quai Branly in Paris, he
plays on the ambiguity between façade and interior, between the inside and the outside, between reflections and more substantive realities.
Jean Nouvel was born in Fumel, a town of 5,800 inhabitants located in the Aquitaine region of France. Nouvel at first wanted to be a painter, but he entered the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Bordeaux in architecture in 1964. He moved to Paris the following year and was admitted to the Ecole nationale supérieur des Beaux-Arts, obtaining the highest grade on the entrance exam in 1966. From 1967 to 1970, he worked in the office of Claude Parent, theoretician of the "oblique" and one of France's more influential architects. In 1970, Nouvel created his first office in collaboration with François Seigneur, an architect strongly inclined to artistic interventions in the built environment. He obtained his degree (DPLG) in 1972, but a year before that, he was named the architect of the Biennale de Paris art exhibition. In 1980, Jean Nouvel enlarged the Biennale to formally include an architecture section. From the earliest phase of his career, he was consistently involved in debates and dissent concerning architecture in the urban environment.
Page [1] [2]
Page [1] [2]
Nouvel is not conservative, he is a risk-taker by nature, but his art has consisted in expanding the envelope of architectural possibilities while respecting programmatic or budgetary requirements. Surrounded by good friends like the publisher Hubert Tonka, Nouvel indulges in a theoretical discourse that may be more French than international, but his buildings are French in the positive, pragmatic sense, in the way the country would like to see itself in the modern era. Indeed, a part of France is truly modern and pragmatic, and an architect like Jean Nouvel is the living proof of this fact. A man of contemporary spirit, Nouvel has not attained the status of national hero given by the Dutch to a Rem Koolhaas, but that may be because his country often fears contemporary art and architecture, reputed to be shallow, insulting, or aggressive toward the past.
He plays on the ambiguity between façade and interior, between reflections and more substantive realities
What Jean Nouvel has attained, even if it has been less noticed in France than might be the case, is the status of an international "star" – an architect whose work is both admired and accepted in countries from the United States to Japan, and most places between. A capacity to build in the complex historical circumstances of a city like Paris does not guarantee similar success on the waterside Corniche in Doha, and yet that is exactly the kind of dichotomy that Jean Nouvel has managed with a typically French aplomb. Though he seeks by no means to be an "official" architect of his country, rather it might be said that he would reject such a notion, Jean Nouvel has nonetheless emerged as the quintessential French architect.
One of the ways in which Jean Nouvel navigates between the extremes of brutality and sophistication in his architecture is through the refined use of ambiguity. Very often the viewer or user of one of his buildings is taken aback by certain features, and yet reassured by others. There are stairways and windows and they are more or less where they might be expected to be, and yet there is also an astonishing overhanging roof, as is the case in his buildings in Tours or Lucerne, or a scene from a movie on the ceiling of a hotel room (Lucerne). This man who dresses in black is affectionate of this product of the combined colors of the spectrum, using it in the Lyon Opera House or the Nantes Law Courts to great effect. Reflective or opaque, black is symbolic of the unknown, of fundamental ambiguity. So too, when Nouvel uses architectural-scale glass screens as he does at the Fondation Cartier, or the Quai Branly in Paris, he
plays on the ambiguity between façade and interior, between the inside and the outside, between reflections and more substantive realities.
Jean Nouvel was born in Fumel, a town of 5,800 inhabitants located in the Aquitaine region of France. Nouvel at first wanted to be a painter, but he entered the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Bordeaux in architecture in 1964. He moved to Paris the following year and was admitted to the Ecole nationale supérieur des Beaux-Arts, obtaining the highest grade on the entrance exam in 1966. From 1967 to 1970, he worked in the office of Claude Parent, theoretician of the "oblique" and one of France's more influential architects. In 1970, Nouvel created his first office in collaboration with François Seigneur, an architect strongly inclined to artistic interventions in the built environment. He obtained his degree (DPLG) in 1972, but a year before that, he was named the architect of the Biennale de Paris art exhibition. In 1980, Jean Nouvel enlarged the Biennale to formally include an architecture section. From the earliest phase of his career, he was consistently involved in debates and dissent concerning architecture in the urban environment.
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Jean Nouvel by Jean Nouvel, Complete Works 1970-2008
Hardcover, 2 Vol. in Plexiglass Box, 29 x 36.8 cm (11.4 x 14.5 in.), 898 pages
$ 700.00
$ 700.00
The work of France's most unique and internationally celebrated contemporary architect—and recipient of the 2008 Pritzker Prize. Limited to 1,000 signed and numbered copies packaged in a translucent plexiglass slipcase especially designed by Jean Nouvel for this edition.
Tour de Verre, New York (USA) 2007. Photo (c) Ateliers Jean Nouvel