Nouvel Riches: Pritzker Gold, Tower of Glass

By Martin Filler, Guest Blogger

Every spring I vow to remain silent about the new winner of the Pritzker Prize, having dismissed the so-called Nobel of Architecture in a 1999 New Republic piece as no more than a redundant, self-regarding publicity stunt that promotes architects already rich and famous.

Try telling that to an architect, though. I've yet to meet one who doesn't crave the honor (or the $100,000 honorarium), and have repeatedly seen my words fall on deaf ears when I try to console dejected also-rans with my opinion that the Pritzker is a dubious, even bogus, accolade.

Still, I always wonder which of three inevitable reactions I will have to the annual news: "Who's he?" (Gottfried Böhm, 1986; Sverre Fehn, 1997; and Paulo Mendez da Rocha, 2006.) "Why?" (Kevin Roche, 1982; Hans Hollein, 1985; and Christian de Portzamparc, 1994). Or "Didn't he already win?" (Gordon Bunshaft and Oscar Niemeyer, both 1988). To that last category I can now add the name of the 2008 "laureate," Jean Nouvel, who I could have sworn had been picked years ago.

Inasmuch as the Pritzker is not going out of business because of my anomalous disdain, Nouvel is an excellent, indeed commendable, choice. He's not too soon (like Zaha Hadid, 2004), not too late (Jorn Utzon, 2003), undeniably gifted (if less so than Rem Koolhaas, 2000 and Tom Mayne, 2005), somewhat uneven (like Renzo Piano, 1998), but a major talent by any measure. That's been clear since 1987, when Nouvel's masterful Institute du Monde Arabe (IMA) in Paris---one of François Mitterrand's grands projets---opened to international acclaim.

After one of those odd mid-career slumps, Nouvel hit a second peak in 2006 with the near-simultaneous completion of his Musée du Quai Branly in Paris and Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis. Though I admire the Branly's intelligent site planning and imaginative exterior, museologically it's a scandale. The Guthrie is well-nigh perfect, but without the fussiness that term usually implies, or the perfectionism Nouvel happily abandoned after his manically detailed IMA.

But much as I try to refrain from judging architecture before it is built, I'm not enthralled by  Nouvel's proposed Tour de Verre---the stalagmite-like 75-story residential tower he's designed for Hines, the real-estate development firm, for the midtown Manhattan lot adjacent to the Museum of Modern Art, which as part of the sale to Hines will get several levels of new exhibition spaces on lower floors of the highrise. Leaving aside the design's aesthetic merits, I'm dismayed by a skyscraper that tall being erected on a mid-block site in such an overbuilt part of the city. I wish Nouvel all the luck that eluded his non-Pritzker-winning predecessor at MoMA, Yoshio Taniguchi.