JEAN NOUVEL
Jean Nouvel (born 12 August 1945) is a French architect. 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. His
parents encouraged Nouvel to study mathematics and language, but when he was 16 years old
he was captivated by art when a teacher taught him drawing. Although he later said he thought
that his parents were guiding him to pursue a career in education or engineering, the family
reached a compromise that he could study architecture which they thought was less risky than
art.
1. Torre Agbar
The building houses the new headquarters for Aguas de Barcelona (Agbar), the
municipal water company. The reinforced-concrete structure, crowned by a glass and steel
dome, has a multi-colored facade of aluminum panels, behind glass louvers, in 25 different
colors. This is not a tower. It is not a skyscraper in the American sense of the
expression: it is a unique growth in the middle of this rather calm city. But it is not the
slender, nervous verticality of the spires and bell towers that often punctuate
horizontal cities. Instead, it is a fluid mass that has perforated the ground – a geyser
under a permanent calculated pressure.
The surface of this construction evokes the water: smooth and continuous, but also
vibrating and transparent because it manifests itself in coloured depths – uncertain,
luminous and nuanced. This architecture comes from the earth but does not have
the weight of stone. It could even be the faraway echo of old formal Catalan
obsessions, carried by a mysterious wind from the coast of Montserrat.
The uncertainties of matter and light make the campanile of Agbar vibrate in the
skyline of Barcelona: a faraway mirage day and night; a precise marker to the entry
of the new diagonale that starts at Plaça de las Glorias. This singular object
becomes a new symbol for an international city. There are 4,400 windows and 56,619
transparent and translucent glass plates. The louvres are tilted at different angles calculated
to deflect the direct sun light. Elliptical in plan the 31 floors are without internal columns, the
perimetric structure and the central concrete core, containing the services and emergency
stairswells, are the important elements of the building. Six lift shafts rise up inside the outer
walls. 4,500 yellow, blue, pink and red lights, placed over the facade, illuminate the tower at
night.
2. Institut du Monde Arabe / Enrique Jan +
Jean Nouvel + Architecture-Studio
In the early eighties Jean Nouvel in conjunction with Architecture-Studio won the
competition to design what would become the Institut du Monde Arabe. It was conceived
during the Grands Projets, a major development initiative headed by the French
government. One of the main reasons behind the construction of this institute was to
create a destination devoted to the relationship of the Arab culture with France. In plan it
follows the curvature of the road, whose form is dictated by the river. Its 2 main volumes
encompass an inner courtyard with the north mass rising 9 stories and the southern
portion rising to 11 stories. A paved plaza provides an element of separation from the
adjacent Universite de Jussieu and the main volume of the building. Further enhancing
the outdoors spaces is the paving that mimics the patterning of the façade. Recessed
ground lights complement the light play that emanates from the interior of the structure
at night. The interior spaces house numerous typologies including a restaurant,
museum, library, offices, and auditorium. A multi storey glass atrium is wrapped with a
steel staircase featuring exposed elevator lifts on the interior. The library and northern
portion of the 4th floor feature increased floor to ceiling heights as well as incorporating
numerous terraces and a mezzanine. He drew inspiration from the traditional lattice work
that has been used for centuries in the Middle East to protect the occupants from the
sun and provide privacy. The system incorporates several hundred light sensitive
diaphragms that regulate the amount of light that is allowed to enter the building. During
the various phases of the lens, a shifting geometric pattern is formed and showcased as
both light and void. Squares, circles, and octagonal shapes are produced in a fluid
motion as light is modulated in parallel. Interior spaces are dramatically modified, along
with the exterior appearance. As affirmation to the quality of the design, it won the Aga
Khan Award for Architecture in 1989, and the Equirre d’Argent for French architecture in
1987.
3. Louvre Abu Dhabi
The Louvre Abu Dhabi is an art and civilization museum, located in Abu Dhabi, United Arab
Emirates. The museum was inaugurated on 8 November 2017 by French President Emmanuel
Macron and United Arab Emirates Vice President Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum and
Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan. The museum is part of a thirty-
year agreement between the city of Abu Dhabi and the French government. The museum is
located on the Saadiyat Island Cultural District. It is approximately 24,000 square metres
(260,000 sq ft) in size, with 8,000 square metres (86,000 sq ft) of galleries, making it
the largest art museum in the Arabian peninsula. The final cost of the construction is expected to
be about €600 million. In addition, US$525 million was paid by Abu Dhabi to be associated with
the Louvre name, and an additional US$747 million will be paid in exchange for art loans, special
exhibitions and management advice. Artworks from around the world are showcased at the
museum, with particular focus placed upon bridging the gap between Eastern and Western art.
Saadiyat Island's Cultural District plans to house the largest single cluster of world-class cultural
assets.[13] In addition to the Louvre Abu Dhabi these are intended to include: Zayed National
Museum, to be designed by United Kingdom-based architectural company Foster and
Partners under the direction of Lord Norman Foster; the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi contemporary
arts museum – expected to be the world's largest Guggenheim; a performing arts centre
designed by Zaha Hadid; a maritime museum with concept design by Tadao Ando and a number
of arts pavilions. The museum is designed as a "seemingly floating dome structure"; its web-
patterned dome allowing the sun to filter through. The overall effect is meant to represent "rays of
sunlight passing through date palm fronds in an oasis."[15][16] The total area of the museum will be
approximately 24,000 square metres (260,000 sq ft). The permanent collection will occupy 6,000
square metres (65,000 sq ft), and the temporary exhibitions will take place over 2,000 square
metres (22,000 sq ft). A double dome 180 metres in diameter, offering horizontal, perfectly
radiating geometry, a randomly perforated woven material, providing shade punctuated
by bursts of sun. The dome gleams in the Abu Dhabi sunshine. At night, this protected
landscape is an oasis of light under a starry dome. Louvre Abu Dhabi becomes the final
destination of an urban promenade, a garden on the coast, a cool haven, a shelter of
light during the day and evening, its aesthetic consistent with its role as a sanctuary for
the most precious works of art.” Its contrasting series of white buildings take inspiration
from the medina and low-lying Arab settlements. In total, 55 individual buildings,
including 23 galleries, make up this museum city. The façades of the buildings are made
up of 3,900 panels of ultra-high performance fibre concrete (UHPC). A vast dome, 180
metres in diameter, covers the majority of the museum city and is visible from the sea,
the surrounding areas and Abu Dhabi city. This dome was constructed by the Austrian
company Waagner Biro who specialize in steel structures. The dome consists of eight
different layers: four outer layers clad in stainless steel and four inner layers clad in
aluminium separated by a steel frame five metres high. The frame is made of 10,000
structural components pre-assembled into 85 super-sized elements, each weighing up to
50 tonnes.
4. National Museum Of Qatar
5. The National Museum of Qatar emerges from a desert
that has ventured all the way to the sea. On the site,
the Royal Palace of Sheikh Abdullah bin Jassim Al
Thani rises up, a twentieth-century landmark of major
heritage value to Qatar.
6.
7. The National Museum is dedicated to the history of
Qatar. Symbolically, its architecture evokes the
desert, its silent and eternal dimension, but also the
spirit of modernity and daring that have come along
and shaken up what seemed unshakeable. So, it’s the
contradictions in that history that I’ve sought to evoke
here.
8.
9. Qatar is also about the peoples who settled along the
seaboard, setting up these coastal towns that became
ports of call for passing nomads as much as local
fishermen and pearl divers. And so the native fauna
and flora, and the nomadic peoples and their long-
held traditions, are the very first features of the history
of Qatar.
10. Three economic miracles occurred to shake up this
overwhelming tranquility. The first, dating from Roman
times, was associated with pearl fishing and the pearl
trade. The second, in the aftermath of the Second
World War, was the amazing discovery of oil, followed
twenty years later by the discovery of another
treasure: gas. The desert peninsula of Qatar and its
people suddenly saw enormous, dazzling change and
the country turned into a real crossroads, alluring and
open, and attracting visitors from far and wide.
11. The building I designed needed to reflect these three
different stories. The first, which covers a long period,
is the story of the peninsula and its inhabitants. The
second is an exploration of the coastal and desert
lifestyles as well as the pearling industry, and third
covers the spectacular acceleration that gave the
kingdom – in just a few decades – the power and
prosperity we associate with it today. Because of its
economic power, Qatar has become a world leader in
fields as diverse as education, communications, and
energy technology.
5. TOURS DUO
The mixed-use project, planned to rise on a former industrial site on the edge of the
Seine in the Paris Rive Gauche district, aims to become a "top business real estate
destination" and neighborhood amenity. Its two towers will house an eight-story hotel,
office space, retail, a top floor restaurant-bar, gardens and green terraces, as well as a
"renewed access" to the Seine. Jean Nouvel's long-awaited 53 West 53rd Street, also
known as the Tower Verre or the MoMA Tower, may finally be ready to move ahead with
construction after the project's developer Hines purchased $85.3 million worth of air
rights from its neighbors MoMA and the St Thomas Episcopal Church and arranged the
$860 million construction loan required for the project. Originally proposed in 2007, the
design has been plagued by problems, including significant delays due to the financial
crisis and a difficult approval process which resulted in the building's height being
slashed from 1,250 feet to its current planned height of 1,050 feet. However, according
to a statement from Hines groundbreaking on the project is now "imminent." Jean
Nouvel has unveiled the official design for the National Art Museum of China (NAMOC).
Originally inspired by the simplicity of “a single brush stroke,” the 21st century art and
calligraphy museum will become the centerpiece of a new cultural district at Olympic
Park, rising next to the historic axis of Beijing and symbolically connecting to the
Forbidden City.
