Winner of 2008 Pritzker Prize’s latest creation is a colourful public park in the Spanish city of Barcelona.

7 April 2008
 
MADRID - French architect Jean Nouvel, winner of the 2008 Pritzker Prize, the world's top architecture award, on Saturday unveiled his latest creation, a colourful public park in the Spanish city of Barcelona.
 
The 5.5 hectare city garden, a riot of palm trees, cactus, bougainvillea and other Mediterranean vegetation, was conceived as a new "green lung" for the capital of Catalonia, and a haven of calm and quiet away from city noises.

A special feature is a system devised to economise in use of water for irrigation, important to a community currently facing drought and serious water shortages. The system involves water storage, treatment and carefully rationed sprinkling techniques.

It was announced last Sunday that Nouvel, 62, had won the highly prestigious Pritzker Prize, sometimes described as the "Nobel Prize of Architecture," which includes a 100,000-dollar grant.

It will be presented at a ceremony in Washington on 2 June, the Los Angeles-based Hyatt Foundation announced.

Foundation chairman Thomas Pritzker said the jury had rewarded Nouvel's "courageous pursuit of new ideas and his challenge of accepted norms in order to stretch the boundaries of the field".

Nouvel is best known as the architect of the Arab World Institute in Paris, which opened in 1987 after being commissioned by former French President Francois Mitterand.

He has designed projects all over the world, including Japan, Spain, England, The Netherlands, Austria, Italy, the Czech Republic, Germany, Belgium and the United States.
   
[AFP / Expatica]