Word: nouvel
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Some architects produce work with a signature look. Richard Meier is one. Daniel Libeskind is another. Almost anything they do is instantly recognizable as theirs. Jean Nouvel isn't one of those. He's playful, contradictory and devoted to the idea of context - designs that grow out of their surroundings and are bracingly different. His career is proof that paying close attention to the neighborhood is a good way to find new avenues...
...this helps to explain why he was named today as the 2008 winner of the Pritzker Prize, which at this point is something like the knighthood of architecture. It was always only a matter of time before the Pritzker Foundation said "Arise, Sir Jean" to Nouvel, 62, who for decades has been one of the most closely followed architects in the world. Born in Fumel, a town in southwestern France, to parents who were both schoolteachers, he was already famous within the profession by 1981, when he was just 35, which is youthful in architect years...
...outside comes inside would turn out to be one of Nouvel's great preoccupations. Transparency is one of his bywords. Paradox is another. Again and again he toys with the idea of buildings that seem to dematerialize, that play hide and seek as you approach them. One of his most influential designs was for an unbuilt skyscraper in Paris, the Endless Tower. Envisioned as a structure rising to over 1300 ft. (400 m.), its surface would shift to ever lighter materials, from granite to aluminum to stainless steel and finally glass, appearing to disappear as it ascended into...
...Thursday - just five days after his Elysée wedding to former top model Carla Bruni. All three of the nation's newsweeklies hit kiosks with critical Sarkozy-focused cover stories. The cover line on L'Express is "The Disappointment"; Le Point details "What's Going Wrong" and the Nouvel Observateur calls him "The President Who Went Pffffftt." And that wasn't the only suggestion Sarko's presidency is deflating. New polls confirm the precipitous drop in Sarkozy's approval rating, from his near-record high of 65% in July 2007 to 41% this month. That low matched the February...
...year is 1952, and Simone de Beauvoir is visiting her American lover in Chicago. She never saw the photograph—the film was lost for 50 years—but last week Frenchmen saw her naked figure on newsstands across the country. The debate rages over whether Nouvel Observateur, a popular weekly, should have put this photo on its cover to commemorate the centenary of Beauvoir’s birth. After all, Beauvoir is an icon for feminism, a fiery philosopher who decried the guilt associated with her gender and female subjection to men. Today’s feminists...