1. ENGLISH 4
LISTENING
TAPESCRIPTS
JEAN NOUVEL
FROM : EURONEWS, 11.2.2010
(b. Fumel, France 1945)
Nouvel places enormous importance on designing a building
harmonious with its site and surroundings. Although Nouvel
relies on context to generate his designs, a certain
continuum occurs from one design to the next. Within nearly
all of his designs, Nouvel consistently presents an
interplay of transparency, shadow, and light.
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French architect Jean Nouvel was one of the guests at Imagina – the 3D technology’s European trade fair, held
in Montecarlo.
Nouvel, who studied at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris, has worked on projects around the world including the
Arab World Institute in Paris and the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis.
He spoke to euronews about the impact technology has on architecture.
Jean Nouvel: “Computers have completely changed an architect’s work, now you can simulate everything, you
can draw a lot more quickly, you can break down a building into separate pieces. You can check each
combination, there are extraordinary new possibilities regarding both conception and realisation.”
Claudio Rocco: “You have said that images are lies. With new technology, are they a little more truthful?”
Jean Nouvel: “With new technology you can lie just as well, perhaps even a little better, that’s the ethical
problem. But it’s true that the lie has always been there. I am referring to promotions, with the wide angle,
rooms that appear three times as big in the prospectus, luxury cars at the front of the shot, pin-ups, trees,
whatever you want, in fact what you no longer see is the architecture, you just see these symbols of luxury,
which are for sale at the same time.
“This lie has always existed but with a computer if you have ethics you can represent things in a very accurate
fashion, so it would be good to effectively establish a number of rules, a sort of ethical code which would allow
you to be sure that what you’re seeing is true.”
Claudio Rocco: “Do you think that some of your pieces could not have been achieved without a computer?”
Jean Nouvel: “I’m absolutely sure of that. There are ideas that I could not have had because the computer
opens the mind. I work with light a lot, for example, and there are some things that I could never have imagined
without that. And then there are things that I absolutely could not have achieved. For example, I worked on the
Louvre in Abu Dhabi, on the big dome, which is a sort of shaft of light which crosses two vaults which in turn are
pierced to allow the light to disappear and then reappear etc.
“If you’d wanted to do it a dozen years ago the simulation and work would have taken two or three centuries,
and that’s too long for me. But now, it’s possible.”
Claudio Rocco: “Regarding the link with the past. In some of your structures, I am thinking for example, of the
Opera House in Lyon, you have integrated the old structure within the new. What is the architect’s relationship
with the past? How can the new be integrated with the old?”
Jean Nouvel: “I think we must always make use of what came before. What is missing most often in
contemporary architecture is the link with history and with geography. I say that you must always take what
came before into account and reuse it as often as possible. As so in history lots of masterpieces are created over
centuries.”
Claudio Rocco: “Do you think that today’s cities will exist in 50 or 100 years. How do you see the city of the
future?”
Jean Nouvel: “The future is not new cities, cities are always changing. What’s important now is what are the
factors of change. In the 20th century we accumulated a lot of new districts, a lot of new buildings, very quickly
which were not linked together, they were just tagged on.
“Cities are very clogged so it is necessary that cities change within themselves, and it’s that way of moving which
will give them a complexity, I hope, that will give them more humanity, more depth. So the future is already 50
per cent there for cities.
“One of the most extraordinary things in Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner is that we see clearly that the future was
always in conflict or in competition with the existing material, with the buildings of the previous century. It is
this relationship between the future and the past which created the city.”
PHOTO AND SCRIPT : http://www.euronews.net/2010/02/11/jean-nouvel-with-new-technology-you-can-lie-just-as-well-perhaps-even-a-little-/
TEXT IN BOX : http://www.greatbuildings.com/architects/Jean_Nouvel.html
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