Nouvel was born in Fumel, in southwestern France, to two teachers, and topped the entrance examination for the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1966. He co-founded the "Mars 1976" collective and France's first architects' union before the Institut du Monde Arabe, its south facade a mechanical screen of light-sensing apertures modelled on a mashrabiya, made him internationally known in 1987. Nouvel has since resisted any fixed style or signature form, arguing instead that each building should answer its own site, culture and programme — a position that has produced buildings as different as the colour-shifting Torre Glòries in Barcelona, the lakefront concert hall of Lucerne's KKL and the dark, image-printed Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis. He received the Royal Gold Medal, the Praemium Imperiale and the Borromini Prize in 2001, the Wolf Prize in 2005, and the Pritzker Prize in 2008.
