Jean Nouvel was born in Fumel in 1945 and studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris. A key protagonist of intellectual debate in France regarding architecture, he was a founding member of Mars 1976 and Syndicat de l'Architecture. The Musée du Quai Branly, and the Fondation Cartier in Paris, the congress center in Luzern, The Agbar tower in Barcelona, the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis more recently the Sofitel hotel in Vienna and in a next future the Louvre in Abu Dhabi and the Philarmonia in Paris are part of his many buildings. His distinctions include the Aga Khan Award for Architecture for the Institut du Monde Arabe (1989), the Wolf Prize in Arts (2005) and the Pritzker Prize (2008). Many exhibitions of his work have been held all over the word from NY to Rio de Janeiro, Tokyo, apart from the restrospective in Centre Pompidou in 2001.
