Jean Nouvel completes in Paris

This week sees the opening of Jean Nouvel’s Musée du Quai Branly in his home city.

The realisation of this project will fulfil a ten year dream for the French President and it is widely expected to be renamed Musée Chirac.

The museum, which cost £165 GBP will host exhibits of indigenous arts, has been a controversial addition to the Paris cultural scene and the first significant addition since the Mitterand era.

Jean Nouvel, “This is a museum built around a specific collection, where everything is designed to evoke an emotional response to the primary object, to protect it from light, but also to capture that rare ray of light indispensable to make it vibrate and awaken its spirituality. Its architecture must challenge our current Western creative expressions. This is, of course easy to say but difficult to achieve.”