Jean Nouvel - architect of prestigious projects

Los Angeles/Prague - The French architect Jean Nouvel, this year's winner of the Pritzker Prize, the equivalent of the Nobel Prize in architecture, is one of the few top-level world architects who has also made an impact on the form of the Czech capital. However, his building in Prague, Golden Angel in Smíchov, is not among his most admired works. Those can be found scattered around the world, particularly in France and its capital, Paris.
    Nouvel is among the most sought-after architects of recent decades. With his often futuristic designs, he has succeeded in competitions for various public buildings, museums, and even office and commercial buildings. He enjoys using glass and the latest technologies, skillfully working with light. On glass walls, he creates screen prints and adds lights diffused into thousands of points of different color shades so that his buildings shine in color.
    He has risen to the absolute top of world architects with the project of the Arab Institute in Paris - a building with a variable façade, whose glass wall is covered with numerous special blinds that automatically open and close according to the intensity of light. "Even if he built nothing else, he would be inscribed in golden letters in all architecture encyclopedias," it was written in the press.
    But Jean Nouvel has built many other projects and has almost always captivated the public and experts alike. Visitors to Paris admire, for example, his optically dematerialized Cartier Foundation headquarters on the Raspail boulevard or the museum of indigenous art on Branly Avenue (Musée du quai Branly), while in Catalonia’s Barcelona, the towering Torre Agbar skyscraper rises from an artificial body of water, and in Vienna, the Gasometer - a former gas tank converted into a multifunctional space for living, business, and entertainment. In the United States, for example, his signature is on the Guthrie Theater building in Minneapolis, in Germany the Lafayette department store in Berlin, in Switzerland the congress center in Lucerne, in Japan the Dentsu Building skyscraper in Tokyo, and in his native France, for example, the opera in Lyon or the Vinci congress center in Tours.
    Nouvel's name appears on a number of prestigious projects being prepared worldwide. For example, last year he won competitions with his designs for the Paris Philharmonic building and a concert hall in Copenhagen, and he is preparing a glass tower for New York (Tour Verre). Perhaps the most excitement was generated by the project of a Louvre museum branch on Saadiyat Island near Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates, to which France will lend part of its art collections.
    In addition to architecture, Nouvel is also involved in design and interior proposals. His signature can be found on cutlery, glasses, or a perfume bottle for the Yves Saint Laurent company.
    Jean Nouvel was born on August 12, 1945, in the town of Fumel in southwestern France. From a young age, he showed artistic talent, but eventually, at the insistence of his parents, who feared he would not be able to make a living as an artist, he decided on architecture. He studied at the Paris School of Fine Arts (École des Beaux - Arts). He soon gained recognition among experts when he made a significant contribution to the discussion among intellectuals about French architecture. He worked in several studios and in 1994 founded Ateliers Jean Nouvel, which has branches in several countries and dozens of collaborators. He has received numerous international awards for his work, honorary doctorates, and the Order of the Legion of Honor.
    Nouvel is married for the second time and has two sons and a daughter.