Jean Nouvel

Born 1945 · French · 20 buildings on the wall

Jean Nouvel (born 1945) is a French architect known for buildings that answer their place and climate with screens, patterns and filtered light. He studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. His Arab World Institute in Paris (1987), whose south wall is made of mechanical lenses, like Arabic latticework, that open and shut with the daylight, brought him international fame, and he won the Pritzker Prize in 2008.

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The Musée du quai Branly in Paris (2006) raises its main gallery 10 metres over a garden like a bridge and covers one wall in living plants. Torre Glòries in Barcelona (2005), first called Torre Agbar, was designed to recall a geyser rising into the air and carries 4,500 LED lights on its skin. The Louvre Abu Dhabi (2017) shelters its galleries under a 7,000-tonne dome meant to evoke sunlight falling through palm fronds in an oasis. The National Museum of Qatar in Doha (2019) takes its form from the desert rose crystal: 539 interlocking discs that shade visitors from the heat. Jean Nouvel's projects are studied for how each design is made for one site rather than a house style.

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