Lectures
Anne Lacaton
Principles of Optimism
Anne Lacaton & Jean Philippe Vassal born in 1955 and 1954 are graduated of the National School of Architecture in Bordeaux. They established Lacaton & Vassal in 1989. Their projects, which seek social and environmental goals through attention to climate, transformation of the existing, economy and the user, are based on a principle of generosity, serving the life, the uses and the appropriation, with a strong commitment for sustainability and social impact. Working carefully with climate and everything already there, reusing, transforming and never demolishing, challenging standards are main principles of the office’s approach. For over three decades, they have designed social housing, cultural and academic institutions, public space, and urban strategies. Projects include the regeneration of the Palais de Tokyo in Paris (2002&2012), the Nantes School of Architecture (2009) multiple social housing projects and the transformation of modernist housing blocks, such as 530 apartments in Bordeaux, Cité du Grand Parc, which received the EU Mies Van der Rohe Award,2019. They are currently designing the renovation of the theater Kampnagel in Hamburg and the transformation of a former hospital into a 138-unit, apartment building in Paris.
Anne Lacaton & Jean Philippe Vassal were awarded the Pritzker Prize 2021 and are recipients of a number of awards, among them the Fundació Mies van der Rohe, European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture (2019), the Global Award for Sustainable Architecture (2018), the Daylight & Building Components Award, Velux Foundation (2011) and the Grand Prix National d’Architecture, France, (2008)