Acclaimed French architect Jean Nouvel presented his new exhibition comprised of various furnitures and design objects at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris. Titled 'Jean Nouvel, Mes Meubles d’architecte', the collection will be on view from 27 October 2016 to 12 February 2017 in the museum. 

Jean Nouvel also launched his wide range of product designs, furnitures, interior design, and publications in a new website, which elevates architect's design phenomenon beyond contemporary buildings he designed. 

Triptyques", walnut and colored mirrors. Image © DR

Jean Nouvel, one of the rare contemporary architects produces more than a hundred of these creations published since 1987. Jean Nouvel has treated this unique invitation not merely as a retrospective but as an opportunity to create a dialogue with the museum, its history and its collections. 

The Jean Nouvel, mes meubles d’architecte exhibition reveals itself with the museum, from the Middle Ages and Renaissance galleries to the 17th and 18th century collections, but also in the graphic design and advertising spaces that Jean Nouvel designed in 1998, creating novel situations and interferences.

“Table au km”, 2011. Gagosian Gallery and Galerie Patrick Seguin. Image © DR

Like other major figures of modern architecture, from mies van der rohe and le Corbusier to jean prouvé, Jean Nouvel has designed furniture over a long period. He often says, ''I am not a designer but an architect who designs.'' 

His furniture and household objects are functional, absolutely rigorous and always rooted in the culture of their time, mirroring his conception and practice of an architecture of context. Jean Nouvel’s “anti-design” uses existing typologies, rejecting too “talkative” and too conceptual furniture and prioritising the elemental. 

“Equilibrist”, 2014, Artemide. Image © DR

In 1987, given “carte blanche” by viA (valorisation de l’innovation dans l’Ameublement), he designed a line of furniture comprising five aluminum prototypes. Running counter to the aesthetic tendencies of the 1980s, aluminum evokes for him the exploration of technological and scientific advances. 

With his wealth of experience and to accompany and extend his architectural projects, in 1995 he created jNd (jean Nouvel design) to develop and publish his furniture projects and objects.

A triptych is a mirrror with three articulated panels, quite simply. It is an object of absolute purity, heavy, thick, elementary, suggesting excellence. Image © jNd

In 1998, jean Nouvel redesigned the Musée des Arts Décoratifs’ graphic design and Advertising spaces. leaving the ornate moldings, parquet floors and circulation spaces of these former apartments in the louvre intact, he created modular exhibition spaces with removable galva screens. 

Jean Nouvel is returning to these spaces almost twenty years later to show his “types,” the iconic pieces he has been developing for thirty years, and the less and less less office furniture ranges. 

At 'Château la Dominique', part of the main building, surrounded by illustrious neighbours such as Cheval Blanc, Petrus, Figeac… the new space is all 'about wine'. Image © jNd

They perfectly embody the Jean Nouvel method: taking an elementary form and constantly perfecting and lightening it with his minimalist vocabulary. He explores each typology, infinitely experimenting with its combinations and expressing the notion of “zero design” with which he reduces the object, whether a shelf, armchair or table, to its most archetypal form. 

Jean Nouvel’s design plays fully on the modular and transformable, on the reversible and foldable. It is the work of an “architect who designs,” a design that redefines space and its rhythms.

KNP-This is a querying of the archetype of the sofa, a reinterpretation of today’s techniques, to suggest other ways of inhabiting furniture, of sitting around, curling up, snuggling in, being separate: of building yourself a “nest”. Image © jNd

Jean Nouvel wanted to integrate this autonomous presentation into the musée des Arts décoratifs’ collections, and particularly his favorite periods: the middle Ages, the renaissance and the 17th and 18th centuries. he has created moments of contemplation and poetry, inviting visitors to sit on the leather seats he designed for the Abu dabi louvre (2016). 

Paralum-A radical break with the traditional standard monotony of ceiling light systems, Paralum suggests a metallic sky, essentially artistic and pictorial. Image © jNd

The sensation of the infinite produced by the table au Km (2011) echoes the altarpieces and Pietàs, his marble carpets (2016) resonate with renaissance intaglia, and the milana chair (1995) with the polychrome wood sgabelli. In the 17th and 18th-century rooms, his large colored triptyques mirrors (2014) create multiple narrations, capturing fragments of space and transforming our initial perceptions with their gold, orange and red reflections without the slightest theatricality.

Jean Nouvel’s major concern, light and its metamorphoses creates novel experiences by plunging us into semi- darkness, leaving us to discover a new museum space in which light reveals the full poetry of each object.

Philharmonia is a very high definition monitoring system combining innovation and technology. The new speakers were initially created specifically for the Philharmonie de Paris recording and mastering studios. Image © jNd

The most exhaustive possible respective of his furniture and objects, the Jean nouvel, mes meubles d’architecte exhibition highlights a lesser-known facet of one of the greatest contemporary architects. 

Often responding more to his desire to experiment than to specific commissions, this radical body of work reveals a more intimate facet of the thinking and work of the winner of the 2008 pritzker Architecture prize.

Summer Hours in Kensington, 2016 -Derived from the book published on the occasion of the realization of the Summer Pavilion at the Serpentine Gallery in London in 2010 by Jean Nouvel, “Summer hours in Kensington” echoes the pleasures of a sunny summer in the heart of London. Image © jNd

General curator of the exhibition is Olivier Gabet, Director of the Musées des Arts Décoratifs and Co-curators are Karine Lacquemant, curatorial assistant, modern and Contemporary Department, Musée des Arts Décoratifs and Odile Fillion, Jean Nouvel design. Scenography designed by Jean Nouvel.

Flammarion- Les Arts Decoratifs. Published on the occasion of the exhibition “Jean Nouvel, mes meubles d’architecte – Sens et essence.” Image © jNd

Displayed at the Musée des Arts decoratifs, from October the 27th, 2016 to February the 12th, 2017, this book reveals more than 30 years of furniture and objects creations. 

Jean Nouvel’s creations are most of the time designed in close relationship with his architectural work, and answer more to a personal desire of experimentation than actual requests.

Top image: “Triptyques”, 2014. Walnut and colored mirrors, Gagosian Gallery and Galerie Patrick Seguin. Image © Aline Coquelle

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