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29-508: Jean Nouvel ( French: [ʒɑ̃ nuvɛl] ; 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 , France’s first labor union for architects. He has obtained a number of prestigious distinctions over the course of his career, including the Aga Khan Award for Architecture (for

58-510: A formal language and, in a 2008 profile, the New York Times wrote that Nouvel’s work lacks even a 'readily apparent common sensibility.' 'They’re very right to say that,' Nouvel says, with quiet intensity, then a smile. 'I’m very proud of that. I’m not a painter or a writer; I don’t work in my room, I work in different cities with different people. I’m more akin to a movie-maker who makes movies on completely different subjects. To reduce style to

87-605: A key participant in intellectual debates about architecture in France: in 1976, he co-founded the Mars 1976 movement, a backlash against corporatism in architecture, and, a year later, the Syndicat de l'Architecture . For 15 years, he designed exhibits for the Biennale de Paris , where he made contacts in the arts and theater. Nouvel was one of the organizers of the competition for the rejuvenation of

116-465: A lawsuit against Restoration Hardware for allegedly violating their trademark and trade dress by selling look-alikes of the Emeco Navy chair, which Restoration Hardware called the “Naval Chair”. Restoration Hardware renamed the chair, then removed them from their website. In January 2013, Restoration Hardware agreed to stop selling the disputed chairs and to recycle their existing stock. Emeco filed

145-493: A national competition to attend the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts . From 1967 to 1970, he earned his income as an assistant to architects Claude Parent and Paul Virilio , who, after only one year, made him a project manager in charge of building a large apartment complex. Nouvel and the filmmaker Odile Fillion have two sons: Bertrand, a post-doctorate computer scientist working at Mindstorm Multitouch in London, and Pierre,

174-466: A profit. By 1979 the company was not receiving enough new government contracts to stay in business and was nearing bankruptcy. Emeco was sold that year to Jay Buchbinder who tried unsuccessfully to revive the military end of the business. Buchbinder's son, Gregg, acquired Emeco from his father in 1998. He noticed that Giorgio Armani and other designers showed an interest in the 1006 chair, so he decided to focus on those and similar products. In 1999

203-453: A theater producer and designer at his company, Factoid. With his second wife, Catherine Richard, Nouvel has a daughter, Sarah. His third wife, Lida Guan, is a Chinese architect who worked with Nouvel. He is currently living with Mia Hägg , a Swedish architect whose practice, Habiter Autrement (HA), is based in Paris. By age 25, Nouvel completed school and entered into his own partnership with François Seigneur. Early in his career, Nouvel became

232-558: Is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Emeco Wilton C. Dinges founded the Electric Machine and Equipment Company (Emeco) in 1944 with $ 300 in savings and a used lathe for machine-work. He started bidding on government manufacturing contracts out of a loft in Baltimore, Maryland , beginning with experimental antennas and jet engine parts. Dinges moved to Hanover, Pennsylvania in 1946 in order to take advantage of

261-455: Is noted for their use of recycled and reclaimed materials. The Coca-Cola Company and Emeco partnered to re-create the Navy Chair using rPET plastic bottles; the 111 Navy Chair became available in 2010. Philippe Starck and Emeco revived and reengineered a 2001 design so that it could be made using a formula that combines waste polypropylene and reclaimed wood fiber. The result, called

290-538: Is one of the largest architectural practices in France. Its main office in Paris employs 140 people. In addition, Ateliers Jean Nouvel has site offices in Rome, Geneva, Madrid, and Barcelona. The company is working on 30 active projects in 13 countries. Nouvel has also designed products and furniture including cutlery for Georg Jensen in 2005, a flacon for a limited edition Yves Saint Laurent fragrance ( L'Homme, 2008), and in 2012,

319-570: The Broom Chair , was launched in 2012. In 2015, the Alfi Chair designed by Jasper Morrison was introduced. The seat of the chair is made of 100% discarded industrial waste – 92.5% polypropylene and 7.5% wood fiber. A 2022 advanced product design course in collaboration with the MIT Department of Architecture led to the development of "The next 150-year chair". In October 2012, Emeco filed

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348-808: The Copenhagen Concert Hall and the courthouse in Nantes (2000); as well as two tall towers in planning in North America, Tour Verre in New York City and a cancelled condominium tower in Los Angeles. In its citation, the jury of the Pritzker prize noted: Of the many phrases that might be used to describe the career of architect Jean Nouvel, foremost are those that emphasize his courageous pursuit of new ideas and his challenge of accepted norms in order to stretch

377-742: 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. Nouvel was born on 12 August 1945 in Fumel , France. He is the son of Renée and Roger Nouvel, who were teachers. When his father became the county's chief school superintendent, his family moved often. His parents encouraged Nouvel to study mathematics and language but when he

406-520: The Les Halles district (1977) and, in 1980, founded the first Paris architecture biennale. In 1981, Nouvel, together with Architecture-Studio , won the design competition for the Institut du Monde Arabe (Arab World Institute) building in Paris, whose construction was completed in 1987 and brought Nouvel international fame. Mechanical lenses reminiscent of Arabic latticework in its south wall open and shut automatically, controlling interior lighting as

435-604: The So So collection for American furniture manufacturer Emeco . Nouvel was awarded the Pritzker Prize , architecture's highest honour, in 2008, for his work on more than 200 projects, among them, in the words of The New York Times , the "exotically louvered" Arab World Institute , the bullet-shaped and "candy-colored" Torre Agbar in Barcelona, the "muscular" Guthrie Theater with its cantilevered bridge in Minneapolis, and in Paris,

464-816: The "defiant, mysterious, and wildly eccentric" Musée du quai Branly (2006) and the Philharmonie de Paris (a "trip into the unknown" c. 2012). Pritzker points to several more major works: in Europe, the Cartier Foundation for Contemporary Art (1994), the Culture and Convention Center in Lucerne (2000), the Opéra Nouvel in Lyon (1993), Expo 2002 in Switzerland and, under construction,

493-537: The US Navy's fleet during World War II . The business grew by under-bidding other manufacturers on government contracts for office building furniture. By 1953, there were four Emeco factories in Hanover. By 1955, Emeco was producing 200,000 chairs per year. Dinges developed the chairs and Emeco's manufacturing process, but he was not a good businessman and due to the elaborate manufacturing process, found it hard to generate

522-619: The adoption of a formal language is such a short-sighted vision that if anybody is reproaching me for this, I would reproach their reproach.'” Nouvel has designed a number of notable buildings across the world, the most significant of which are listed below. As part of the announcement of Nouvel's Pritzker Prize, the Hyatt Foundation, which awards the prize, published a full illustrated list of Nouvel's architectural work, including projects which were never built, projects in construction, and designs for which construction has yet to start. In 2001,

551-525: The aesthetic of modernism and post-modernism to create a stylistic language all his own. He places enormous importance on designing a building harmonious with its surroundings." "I am often presented as an architect of ‘French high tech,’" Nouvel said, in a talk he gave in Milan in April 1995. "I would like to begin by explaining what I mean by the term modernity: Modernity is alive, it is not some historical movement that

580-451: The boundaries of the field. [...] The jury acknowledged the 'persistence, imagination, exuberance, and, above all, an insatiable urge for creative experimentation' as qualities abundant in Nouvel's work. In its biographical sketch of Nouvel, the Pritzker site quotes Bill Lacy's One Hundred Contemporary Architects : "Since the beginning of his architectural career in the 1970s, [Nouvel] has broken

609-428: The company posted a profit for the first time in more than 20 years. Gregg met French designer Philippe Starck at the 1998 International Contemporary Furniture Fair (ICFF) and the two agreed to collaborate on numerous designer versions of the 1006 Navy chair. By 2004 these accounted for half of Emeco's production, or 46,500 chairs per year. A short documentary film called "The 77 Steps of Making an Emeco Chair" by

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638-463: The director Beat Kuert filmed a documentary about five of Nouvel's projects, titled Jean Nouvel . Nouvel and the buildings which he designed have received a number of distinctions during his career, the most prestigious of which are listed below. Syndicat de l%27Architecture The Syndicat de l'Architecture is a French labor union for architects co-founded by Jean Nouvel . This article related to one or more trade or labor unions

667-640: The grandson of designers Charles and Ray Eames shows the industrial processes and craftsmanship required to manufacture the Navy Chair. In addition to architects Gehry, Starck, and Lord Foster, Emeco has collaborated with many other famous architects and designers such as Ronan & Erwan Bouroullec , Naoto Fukasawa , Barber Osgerby , Jasper Morrison , Sam Hecht and Kim Colin , Nendo , Konstantin Grcic , Adrian Van Hooydonk ( BMW Designworks ), Michael Young , Jean Nouvel , Christophe Pillet  [ fr ] , Andrée Putman , and Ettore Sottsass . Emeco

696-458: The lenses' photoelectric cells respond to exterior light levels. Nouvel had three different partners between 1972 and 1984: Gilbert Lezenes, Jean-François Guyot, and Pierre Soria. In 1985, with his junior architects Emmanuel Blamont, Jean-Marc Ibos and Mirto Vitart, he founded Jean Nouvel et Associés. Then, with Emmanuel Gattani, he formed JNEC in 1988. In 1994, he founded Ateliers Jean Nouvel , his present practice, with Michel Pélissié. Today, it

725-424: The local labor market. He obtained 10,000 pounds of aluminum scrap metal at an attractive price and started using it to build dining table legs. Later Emeco manufactured chair frames and eventually focused completely on aluminum chairs in 1948. The Emeco 1006 Navy Chair for which the company is known was one of several furniture products made out of anodized aluminum, such as bunks and lockers, that Emeco made for

754-508: The time, ‘architecture needed to seek its sources in the culture of today, in other disciplines’, and fully embrace the nature of the society of which it was the ultimate expression." Noting cinema's influence on Nouvel as well as the architect's affinity for postmodern philosophy, he added, "At its best, when [Nouvel] doesn’t overdo it, his is an approach that can enchant with its theatrical blurring of boundaries, its poetic feeling for atmosphere and its light-hearted play with signs and signifiers:

783-667: The winking mechanical mashrabiyas of the Institut du Monde Arabe, the tree-filled mise en abyme of the crystalline Fondation Cartier, or the pluie de lumière that filters through the intricate metal-mesh dome of the Louvre Abu Dhabi." "At his boldest, Nouvel is at the edge of what" the postmodern philosopher and media theorist Jean Baudrillard "called 'the sparkle and violence of American cities,'" wrote Amelia Stein, in The Guardian . "Both critics and admirers have commented that he eschews

812-451: 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: he could study architecture, which they thought was less risky, as a profession, than art. When Nouvel failed an entrance examination at the École des Beaux-Arts of Bordeaux , he moved to Paris, where he won first prize in

841-475: Was interrupted a few decades ago. Modernity is making the best use of our memory and moving ahead as fast as we can in terms of development." Writing in The Architectural Review , Andrew Ayers quoted Nouvel's 1980 aperçu, "The future of architecture is no longer architectural," by which the architect meant that "rather than remaining a closed discipline, as it seemed to be in the technocratic France of

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