For their three decades of work, Anne Lacaton and Jean-Phillippe Vassal won the 2021 Pritzker Architecture Prize, architecture’s highest honor. The selection committee cited their work for consistently contributing to humanity and the built environment. Their projects improve the lives of many and respond to current environmental and social urgencies, especially in the field of urban housing. Emphasizing sustainability, the pair believe firmly in the “never demolish” principle, instead favoring upgrading and transforming existing structures. 

In 2011, Lacaton and Vassal transformed La Tour Bois le Pretre, a 96-unit city housing project located in Paris. The city wanted to demolish this social housing, but the architects reimagined the building, removing the concrete facade and extending the building’s footprint to add bioclimatic balconies, enlarging each unit. 

La Tour Bois le Pretre – Pre Renovation

La Tour Bois le Pretre – Post Renovation

Later in 2017, they transformed 530 units in three buildings at Grand Parc in Bordeaux, France, improving living spaces for the building’s inhabitants. Each apartment unit received a winter garden and balcony, giving each unit more space, natural light, usability, and views.

Grand Parc – Mid-renovation: building extended with winter gardens and balconies

The extension of a Grand Parc apartment viewed from the unit

Emphasizing transformation over demolition, Anne Lacaton commented:  “Transformation is the opportunity of doing more and better with what is already existing. The demolishing is a decision of easiness and short term. It is a waste of many things—a waste of energy, a waste of material, and a waste of history. Moreover, it has a very negative social impact. For us, it is an act of violence.”

In choosing Lacaton and Vassal for the 2021 prize, the jury cited the following: “In their housing projects for the transformation of the Paris block, Tour Bois le Prêtre, and three blocks in the Grand Parc neighborhood in Bordeaux (both realized with Frederic Druot), instead of demolition and reconstruction, they carefully added space to the existing buildings in the form of generous extensions, winter gardens and balconies that allow for freedom of use and therefore are supportive of the real lives of the residents. There is a humility in the approach that respects the aims of the original designers and the aspirations of the current occupants.”

The pair is currently working on several more transformations of existing buildings, including turning a hospital into a mid-rise apartment building in Paris.

In their body of work, Lacaton and Vassal demonstrate responsible architecture, and for these qualities, they won the Pritzker Prize!

Source: https://www.archdaily.com/958565/anne-lacaton-and-jean-philippe-vassal-receive-the-2021-pritzker-architecture-prize?ad_source=search&ad_medium=projects_tab&ad_source=search&ad_medium=search_result_all