Jean Nouvel

Jean Nouvel (born 12 August 1945) is a French architect.

In 1964 he enrolled at the École des Beaux-Arts in Bordeaux in the Architecture course. In 1966, he was first admitted to the Paris Higher School of Fine Arts (ENSBA).

After working for Claude Parent, the father of the «oblique function», and in the intellectual movement of the architect Paul Virilio, he founded his first agency in 1970 with François Seigneur.

In 1971 he received the DPLG architect diploma and thanks to the meeting with the critic Georges Boudaille, he became architect of the Paris Biennale. He then practiced scenography for the architecture and design section of the Les Années 50 exhibition at the Center Pompidou in 1988, and more recently that of the exhibition Le Futur du travail and La Mobilité for Expo 2000 in Hanover. In 1976, he meets the set designer Jacques le Marquet who makes him discover the world of theater and staging.

Jean Nouvel has always taken militant positions, at times polemical regarding problems and decisions on architecture and the city. In 1976 he was co-founder of the movement of French architects March 1976. The following year he was co-founder of the Syndicate of Architecture and one of the main organizers of the international consultation for the redevelopment of the Quartier des Halles in Paris.

He founded the Architecture Biennale in 1980 within the Paris Biennale.

Nouvel has won numerous architecture and design awards, and has received various distinctions for his work. In 1980 he was awarded the silver medal of the Académie d'Architecture. In 1983 he was appointed honorary doctor by the University of Buenos Aires. In 1987 he received the "Grand Prix d'Architecture" for the totality of his work and the "Equerre d'Argent" for his creations of minimalist furniture. His work has been exhibited in several international museums such as the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid, the Museum of Modern Art Exposeum or the Center Pompidou art and culture center in Paris.

In 2008 he was awarded the Pritzker Prize. In 2010, according to the magazine D'architectures, Jean Nouvel's studio is second in France (after that of Renzo Piano) in terms of turnover with 39 million and 465 thousand euros earned.

In March 2012 it was made official that Nouvel will carry out the project for the headquarters of the Fendi Foundation, commissioned by Alda Fendi, between the Imperial Forums and the Circus Maximus, in the heart of Rome.

Nouvel studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and was a founding member of Mars 1976 and Syndicat de l'Architecture. He has obtained a number of prestigious distinctions over the course of his career, including the Aga Khan Award for Architecture (technically, the prize was awarded for the Institut du Monde Arabe which Nouvel designed), the Wolf Prize in Arts in 2005 and the Pritzker Prize in 2008. A number of museums and architectural centres have presented retrospectives of his work….Wikipedia…>>