Lacaton & Vassal winners of the 2021 Pritzker Prize – the French Touch in the architectural pantheon!

Graduates of the Ecole nationale supérieure d’architecture et de paysagisme de Bordeaux in 1980, Anne Lacaton and Jean-Philippe Vassal set up their practice in Bordeaux in 1987, where they made a name for themselves in 1993 with the now-famous “Maison Latapie”, before moving to Paris in 2000 to work on the Palais de Tokyo project. Prior to this, Jean-Philippe Vassal worked for 5 years in Niger as an urban planning architect, where he studied “economy of means”, and Anne Vassal worked at the Arc-en-Rêve architecture centre.

Since then, they have worked on a number of major projects, including the Management Sciences university centre in Bordeaux, the Nantes School of Architecture, the FRAC Nord-Pas-de-Calais in Dunkirk, the Tour Bois-le-Prêtre in Paris (with Frédéric Druot and Christophe Hutin), and the renovation of buildings G, H and I at the Grand Parc in Bordeaux.

Their practice was awarded the Grand Prix national d’architecture in 2008 for the originality of its work. The Tour Bois-le-Prêtre project won the Prix de l’Equerre d’Argent in 2011 and the Global Award for Sustainable Architecture at the Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine in 2018.

The work of Anne Lacaton and Jean-Philippe Vassal is rooted in their longstanding research into minimal housing, production methods and construction solutions. Their conception of architecture draws its inspiration from the experience of the user and the issues arising from his or her daily life, to propose generous and versatile living, working and leisure spaces. Their approach to construction is based on an eminently social approach and praxis, placing architecture at the service of the inhabitant at all times.

Anne Lacaton: ” We’re trying to defend this idea that space is also a factor in quality of life, in social peace within families or with neighbours “.

Their projects express a desire to rehabilitate and improve existing buildings, and a categorical refusal to accept the “clean slate” principle of demolishing the old and replacing it with the new. This is in the interests of economy and ecological awareness, because the best waste is the waste we don’t produce. In this way, the two architects are turning the practice of the profession on its head by creating and nurturing a positive vision of what already exists, and a pragmatism of ‘making do’ that allows them to ‘push back the walls’ and get the best out of each structure. Adding, transforming and reusing are the watchwords of each of their creations.

For Jean-Philippe Vassal: “It’s so violent, so awful to live somewhere for ten years and suddenly see the disappearance of a home in which a friend, a neighbour has existed, haswhen we can keep people, and from the existing, produce housing that the standard is unable to produce at the same level of quality – spending half as much money.”

In 2007, they published the book Plus with Frédéric Druot, in which they defend the principle of conserving and rehabilitating towers and bars built between 1950 and 1970.

The Pritzker Prize jury praised “their work, which responds to the climatic and ecological emergencies of our time as much as to its social emergencies, particularly in the field of urban housing, reinvigorating modernist hopes and dreams of improving the lives of as many people as possible”, as well as their “acute sense of space and materials, which gives rise to an architecture as solid in its forms as in its convictions, as transparent in its aesthetics as in its ethics”.

Founded in 1979, the Pritzker Prize is the most prestigious award in the world of architecture, equivalent to the Nobel Prize. Anne Lacaton and Jean-Philippe Vassal are the third and fourth French architects to receive this distinction, after Christian de Portzamparc in 1994 and Jean Nouvel in 2008.

The Maison Latapie (Floirac, 1991-1993) consists of an economical metal framework that creates a “volume to be occupied in a portion of territory”. With a modest budget (€70,000, originally planned for a 100 m2 pavilion), it was possible to build a 185 m2 loft with a translucent polycarbonate envelope that extends the interior space out into the garden.

For the Nantes School of Architecture, the architects have doubled the surface area of the available spaces without inflating the budget, and have extended the range of uses for the building while at the same time, by installing a panoramic terrace and a monumental ramp, giving it a dimension of openness to the public space and a closer relationship with the elements.

The Tour Bois-le-Prêtre is a 50-metre-high social housing tower built in the 1960s. It houses 96 flats ranging from 2 to 6 rooms. Druot, Lacaton and Vassal are proposing to renovate the building rather than demolish it (as originally envisaged).

Their project proposes to extend the living spaces of the existing flats by adding new floors on the periphery of the tower, to house winter gardens and long balconies that create a new relationship with the outside, the light, the sky and the elements, while having a positive impact on energy consumption.

For the duration of the works, the residents remained in the tower; in the end, they were able to either keep their flat or move to another.

Ten years after its reopening in 2001, the Musée d’art moderne et contemporain, built in 1937 for the Paris Universal Exhibition, has grown threefold (from 9,000 to 22,000 square metres), and in the process has become Europe’s largest site dedicated to contemporary art.

The architects have methodically stripped bare the building’s raw concrete and metal structure and its closed glass roofs, in order to reveal and celebrate its materiality, light and plastic potential. The volumes thus freed up offer a rich and poetic spatiality and a wide range of uses for the spaces left free.

The FRAC of the Nord-Pas-de-Calais region is based in the port of Dunkirk, in the former AP2 boathouse, an emblematic feature of the site. The architects created a new replica of the building, covered in a bioclimatic light skin, and attached it to the existing hall in a bid to preserve and assert the identity of the site. A prefabricated interior structure provides open-plan floors with flexible, scalable space, in keeping with the programme.

The existing hall houses an area that has been left completely free to host events directly linked to the FRAC’s activities or independent events.

A monograph presenting their work was published by Editions Hyx as part of their exhibition at the Cité de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine in 2009.