designers
Jean Nouvel
Jean Nouvel was born in Fumel, France in 1945. After enrolling at the School of Fine Arts in Bordeaux, in 1966 he ranked first in the competition for admission to the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, from where he graduated in 1972. Nouvel was assistant to the architect Claude Parent and, inspired by the urbanist and essayist Paul Virilio, began practising in 1970. In 1976 he founded the Mars movement, whose aim was to oppose corporatism in architecture. Each of his projects has been designed to be unique in relation to each combination of people, place and time. Many of his works have been able to transform environments, indelibly marking each city. Among the buildings designed by Nouvel are the Institut du Monde Arabe built in Paris in 1987, the Cartier Foundation (Paris 1994), the Euralille Shopping Centre (Lille 1995), the Palace of Justice (Nantes 2000), the Agbar Tower (Barcelona 2000-05) and 100 11th Avenue New York (NY 2006). In 2008 he received the Pritzker Prize.
Designer's articles