We’re still recovering from last week’s art fair overload, but the Pritzker Architecture Prize waits for no one. Your 2008 winner? Jean Nouvel! The 62-year-old Frenchman will be presented with a $100,000 grant (a paltry 63,347 Euros) and a fetching bronze medallion at the official ceremony on June 2 at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. He’ll be the second ever French recipient of the Pritzker, which this year celebrates its 30th anniversary; the first was 1994 laureate Christian de Portzamparc.

In announcing the selection of Nouvel, Hyatt Foundation chairman Thomas J. Pritzker noted that, “The jury acknowledged the ‘persistence, imagination, exuberance, and, above all, an insatiable urge for creative experimentation’ as qualities abundant in Nouvel’s work.” The jury consisted of Lord Palumbo (who served as chairman), architect and Keio University professor Shigeru Ban, Vitra chairman Rolf Fehlbaum, architect and Rice University professor Carlos Jimenez, architectural historian Victoria Newhouse, architect and 1998 Pritzker laureate Renzo Piano, and writer/architectural consultant Karen Stein.