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MASTER ARCHITECT AT WORK
Pritzker Prize-winning architect Jean Nouvel is at the height of an already legendary career. At age 70, he circles the globe, tending to such monumental projects as The Louvre Abu Dhabi, The National Museum Qatar and The National Museum of China. Among the most innovative, thought-provoking and rebellious architects of his generation, Nouvel, in this 15-minute documentary short, reflects on his work, as well as his design philosophy. A child of the Paris student uprising of May 1968, Nouvel has long held steadfast to his deconstructivist roots. He approaches each project differently, acknowledging that he is a master without a trademark style. About judges for high-stakes architectural competitions, he jokes, “If they can’t figure out who it is that means it’s me." Our camera follows Nouvel as he inspects, explains and reflects on key buildings of his career (among them, the Foundation Cartier, the Musee Quay Branley, and the Philharmonie de Paris), as well as the major works-in-progress. We see a master at work, in the varied stages off his process from conceptualizing and sketching to deciding the color of the stone to be used in the galleries of The Louvre Abu Dhabi. This is a meditative and rare portrait of an one of the giants of contemporary architecture and design, for which the filmmakers have had exclusive access to Nouvel, and exclusive access to the building sites of several projects under construction, never-before seen on screen.