The Real Deal New York

Jean Nouvel, born in 1945, is a French architect whose portfolio of buildings in New York City includes the mixed-use tower next to the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in Midtown, also known as the MoMA Expansion Tower at 53 West 53rd Street. The building, formerly known as Tower Verre, was under construction as of September 2015. It will contain a luxury hotel, galleries for MoMA and high-end residential condominiums. Nouvel, who won the Pritzker Prize in 2008, is the founder of Ateliers Jean Nouvel, and has also designed 40 Mercer Street and 100 11th Avenue, both upscale condo buildings. In Europe, the architect’s portfolio includes Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris, which includes a glass wall interlaced with a metallic screen of moving geometric shapes, and Torre Agbar in Barcelona, a pickle-shaped skyscraper that lights up at night. He is a graduate of the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Nouvel has been married twice, to Odile Fillion, with whom he has two sons, and Catherine Richard, with whom he has a daughter. -TA