Jean Nouvel, Pritzker Prize winner 2008, is without doubt the most exceptional and most important contemporary architect in France.

To date, the architect has created 200 buildings including the glittering Cartier Foundation for Contemporary Art in Paris, the confident "Torre Agbar" in Barcelona and the "Galeries Lafayette" department store in Berlin.

He is currently working on forty new large projects in thirteen countries. The 140 Nouvel employees currently have their hands full with a new Paris Philharmonic Hall near the Cité de Musique as well as with a branch of the Louvre in the form of a spectacular circular-plan building in Abu Dhabi and a giant office tower right next to the New York Museum of Modern Art on the scale of the Empire State and the Chrysler Building.