CNN style Architecture | Champions of French social housing win the ‘Nobel of architecture’

Anne Lacaton and Jean-Philippe Vassal, known for transforming and revitalizing neglected buildings across France, have been named winners of architecture’s equivalent to the Nobel Prize.

The duo, whose “never demolish” ethos has given new life to pre-existing urban architecture, will be awarded the 2021 Pritzker Prize at a ceremony later this year, organizers announced Tuesday.

Born in France and Morocco, respectively, Lacaton and Vassal met as students in Bordeaux before co-founding the Paris-based practice Lacaton & Vassal in 1987. Together, they have designed a number of major cultural and educational buildings, including the Nantes School of Architecture’s riverside campus, completed in 2009, and an ambitious 2012 expansion of the Palais de Tokyo art gallery in Paris, which saw the museum increase in size by 20,000 square meters (215,000 square feet).  —read more—