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.