Jean Nouvel

Jean Nouvel has published a press release about ''why he did not go to the opening of the Philharmonie de Paris" and you can read the full declaration of Jean Nouvel here:

''We will have to run in the room, have your water tested by orchestras to adjust the acoustics. No need to start early. In spring 2015, the end of the season, the major orchestras of the world for exceptional concerts at reduced prices but we'd come. The real season begin in September with the Orchestre de Paris. "In the fall of 2013 it was the bright Pierre Boulez recommendations to the President of the Philharmonic, his friend Laurent Bayle, about published by Vanity Fair magazine in September 2013. Today the real season begins in early January, the Philharmonic opens too early . Without testing. Against all the advice of its architect since 2013, the building was opened in a schedule that does not allow to meet the architectural and technical requirements. The Philharmonie was shot in each leg. By regal decision of the Director of the Philharmonic, which according to the statutes of the private association (law 1901) alone in the budget allocated to it. The architect to check and sign the expenditure was dismissed. Public money is well spent day by day, secretly, without external control to the association.

However, the Philharmonic is a public project, funded by 100% of public money, born of a generous ambition, born of an act of love for music. Jacques Chirac, Dominique de Villepin, Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres, Bertrand Delanoë, sensitive to the arguments of Pierre Boulez, aware of the absence in France of a real concert hall, decide that music as well as the Fine Arts is entitled to place of perfect expression, built on the foundations of a program today, revolutionary, revealing the open character of a place for everyone and can accommodate an extensive repertoire of classical music to contemporary music in its experimental form or popular expressions. They decide to invent a new instrument, a variable geometry room that meets the requirements loyalty of the most famous concert halls in the world, to show that they are wrong no century, they chose as the site of the Park La Villette, bordering the Seine-Saint-Denis, lively place, encounters between all generations and social backgrounds. All this does not lack panache: it is likely to give to our country and its capital an image and a globally attractive location. In late 2011, the crisis settles, the project is delayed, the Prime Minister wants to stop the project, but Nicolas Sarkozy, "présidentiellement" slice and confirms the initial ambition.

After the election of François Hollande, some feared the judgment, the death of the project. The latter was preserved with an exciting argument of the new minister of culture: it is too late to stop it. In the new majority, no one defends this project, the City of Paris refused to follow the State's investment. The crisis causes a sacrificial application on behalf of the economy, the national effort. The economic crisis is not automatically cultural crisis, architectural crisis, it requires strategy and invention: but at the same time, it is the fear of revealing changes in costs, a search for a scapegoat, the architect is perfect for this role. Described as star-artist capricious, it is denigrated, it is put away secretly contract with threat of eviction. It was then entering the illegality of the association of the Philharmonic to hide during elections actual costs.

The crisis justifies all the sacrifices which the convocation of a cost killer who with the Director General of the Philharmonic will economically disastrous decisions. On behalf of the sacrifice, they will actually sacrifice the sacrifice: the sacrifice of money by increasing the time and cost. Violations at work are increasing, Ms. Aurélie Filippetti who they are shown replied: "People find it very well even when" judgment of the Minister of Culture, Minister of architecture, Minister of authors before a Copyright architect violated. Sam Just new culture. With this support, Director and cost killer feel wings, they cut the beast. The architecture is martyred, the details sabotaged, so taxpayers will pay, once again, to correct these aberrations decision. Yet today, strong and symbolic architecture of such a program is an international destination, and global economy, creating wealth and social meeting. For the Philharmonie de Paris is actually a real Centre Pompidou music with a space before the fleet of more than 200 meters long by 20 to 30 meters wide which is a free place with pictures and music projected into space open or closed, living place, permanent, in conjunction with a gazebo to 37 meters high, overlooking the north and east of the Grand Paris.

Open the Philharmonie de Paris program without these areas makes no sense and is an attack on the architectural work. In this regard, I will argue my moral rights on the compliance of the work as well as other crucial points for finishing worthy homes and the room.

These are the life conditions of the significant investment made this wonderful program. It is time before that opening night, to announce, as suggested by Pierre Boulez, the Philharmonie de Paris is running. This building is premature, with time and a lot of care for premature infants as his stigmata disappear ... We are in the pre-opening true prelude to future symphonies dedicated to all future generations, and in this time of grief I find this very Philharmonie Charlie by its situation, its intergenerational generosity, for its opening on social and cultural diversity.

Contempt last two years for architecture, for an architect and the architect of the most important French cultural program of the new century forbid me to express my agreement and my satisfaction with my participation in the evening opening in an architecture that often oscillates between counterfeiting and tampering. This should open a debate on the architect's missions, the owner and the contractor in our society, as well as the control of the use of public money in public buildings.''

-Jean Nouvel

Vue de la Philharmonie de Paris depuis le parc de la Villette © Ateliers Jean Nouvel

L’Amphithéâtre © William Beaucardet

> via Ateliers Jean Nouvel