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The Paris-based duo has amassed a portfolio defined by openness, adaptive reuse, and human enrichment
Words by: Will Speros
Anne Lacaton and Jean-Philippe Vassal of the Parisian architecture firm Lacaton & Vassal have been named the 2021 Pritzker Prize laureates. Over more than 40 years, the pair has garnered recognition for their private and social housing projects, as well as cultural and academic institutions throughout Europe and West Africa. The firm’s portfolio reflects an emphasis on quality of life through open use and abundant space, often in urban environments. “Good architecture is open open to life, open to enhance the freedom of anyone, where anyone can do what they need to do,” Lacaton says. “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.”
2021-03-17T07:00:00
Gallery: Half a dozen of the Pritzker Prize-winners’ best projects
Anne Lacaton and Jean-Philippe Vassal, co-founders of French practice Lacaton & Vassal, have been named the winners of the 2021 Pritzker Architecture Prize.
Here we present some of the work spanning the decades, along with a short biography.
Anne Lacaton (1955, Saint-Pardoux, France) and Jean-Philippe Vassal (1954, Casablanca, Morocco) met in the late 1970s during their formal architecture training at École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture et de Paysage de Bordeaux. Lacaton went on to pursue a Masters in Urban Planning from Bordeaux Montaigne University (1984), while Vassal relocated to Niger, West Africa to practice urban planning. Lacaton often visited Vassal, and it was there that the genesis of their architectural doctrine began, as they were profoundly influenced by the beauty and humility of sparing resources within the country’s desert landscapes.
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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
17 Mar 2021 News
“Not only have they defined an architectural approach that renews the legacy of modernism, but they have also proposed an adjusted definition of the very profession of architecture. The modernist hopes and dreams to improve the lives of many are reinvigorated through their work that responds to the climatic and ecological emergencies of our time, as well as social urgencies, particularly in the realm of urban housing. They accomplish this through a powerful sense of space and materials that creates architecture as strong in its forms as in its convictions, as transparent in its aesthetic as in its ethics.”