Architecture: Curtain Up!

In Jean Nouvel's first U.S. building, down is up, inside is out, and nothing is quite what it seems

Jean Nouvel is standing in midair with his arms held high. O.K., he's not really in midair. He's standing on a window. Well, not exactly a window. It's a 5-ft. by 10-ft. plate of glass that's set into the floor of a long corridor of his new Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, Minn. It's the corridor that's in midair. Actually, it's not simply a corridor. It's more a kind of covered bridge to nowhere that cantilevers 178 ft. across and 60 ft. above the city's West River Parkway. And then there's the other window, the mirrored one. But we'll get to that...

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