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Pritzker Prize 2021 Laureates, French architects Anne Lacaton and Jean-Philippe Vassal, founders of Lacaton & Vassal, are known for their “never demolish” principle and their notion of sustainability embodied in a three-pillar balance: economic, environmental, and social. In this exclusive video for ArchDaily, Martha Thorne, executive director of the Pritzker Architecture Prize and Dean of IE School of Architecture and Design, shares some of the reasons why Lacaton & Vassal has won the Pritzker Prize 2021.
As founders of the Paris-based architecture firm, Lacaton and Vassal have completed over 30 projects throughout Europe and West Africa, ranging from private cultural and academic institutions to public spaces, social housing, and urban developments. One of their most relevant works, the transformation of 530 dwellings in Bordeaux, won the 2019 EU Prize for Contemporary Architecture - Mies van der Rohe Award by proving how far their “never demolish” principle can go.
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The 2021 Pritzker Architecture Prize, architecture’s highest honor, has been granted to Anne Lacaton and Jean-Philippe Vassal, founders of Lacaton & Vassal, the French duo renowned for their multiple sustainable housing projects and for the Palais de Tokyo, a contemporary art gallery in Paris. In their three decades of work, Lacaton & Vassal always prioritized the “
enrichment of human life”, benefiting the individual and supporting the evolution of the city.
"Good architecture is open—open to life, open to enhance the freedom of anyone, where anyone can do what they need to do. It should not be demonstrative or imposing, but it must be something familiar, useful and beautiful, with the ability to quietly support the life that will take place within it." -- Anne Lacaton