Word: nouvel
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...million building that Nouvel has delivered is actually three theaters: a thrust stage that seats 1,100, a proscenium house for 700 and a 200-seat "studio" for new plays. The new Guthrie, which also has its own restaurants and bars, is situated on a stretch of the Mississippi that was once a thriving industrial waterfront. Old mills and factories still survive nearby, and Nouvel looked to them for his first inspiration. "It was important to me to create a link with the history of the city," he explains. "I said to myself, 'Theater is an industry...
...flames of bygone furnaces. The Guthrie's exterior walls are covered in dark-blue steel meant to recall grain silos. But the metal is imprinted with images from past Guthrie productions, scenes with great performers like Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy. "There are 'ghosts' on the walls," says Nouvel. "These are the ancestors of the place...
...Nouvel has a shaved head and a bearish silhouette. When he pads around the theater, talking about ghosts and ancestors, he makes you think of Telly Savalas playing Macbeth, or he would if Savalas had been somebody who could use a word like polysemous to explain those electronic chimneys. (That means they have more than one meaning.) While anyone who can come up with polysemous speaks perfectly competent English, Nouvel's is a bit idiosyncratic. As he indicates a large window that looks over the river, he says, "We want to keep it open so you can feel the noise...
Then again, he may mean just what he says about feeling the noise. Paradox, disassociation and derangement of the senses are things Nouvel loves to play with. That window, for instance, is set in a deep recess of mirrored stainless steel. Look up and you see, reflected in the upper panel, the cars on the roadway beneath you. Look down and the lower panel reflects the sky. Up, earth; down, sky. His Cartier Foundation in Paris is a glass-walled structure with a freestanding glass wall situated a few yards in front of it. The effect is to create multiple...
...Guthrie, by contrast, seems more weighty at first. But with its projections and "ghosts," its mirrors and terraces, it turns out to be a very open place. That would be part of Nouvel's love of paradox. If the Guthrie gains him the prestige in the U.S. he deserves, here's another paradox you can count on. His buildings may aim to dematerialize, but you'll be seeing a lot more of them...