Lacaton & Vassal

An approach to architecture

Anne Lacaton and Jean-Philippe Vassal established their practice in 1987. A useful way to read their work is to ask what an existing situation can still offer. Their housing, cultural and educational projects combine specific programmes with space that occupants can use in ways the original brief may not predict. Retention and addition are design decisions to examine in plans and sections, rather than a visual style to recognise from a photograph.

Housing: make the façade inhabitable

At Grand Parc in Bordeaux, the practice collaborated with Frédéric Druot and Christophe Hutin on the transformation of three blocks containing 530 existing homes. Winter gardens and balconies enlarge the apartments while retaining the main buildings. An exterior wall becomes a sequence of spaces between the living room and the city. For a reader studying the scheme, the key question is what this added depth lets residents do: how they furnish it, open it to outside air or change its use with the season. The extension is valuable as room for choice, not simply as a new elevation.

Culture: keep a large room available

At FRAC in Dunkerque, a new building beside the former AP2 boat-building hall accommodates the art institution. The retained hall can operate with the new building or independently. This pairing avoids forcing every part of an existing structure into one permanent programme. It also gives readers a clear comparison: spaces arranged for the institution’s immediate requirements alongside a large room whose future activities are less tightly prescribed. Assessing the project means looking at the connections, access and differences between the two volumes, as well as their outward resemblance.

Education: leave space for changing work

The Nantes architecture school brings prescribed rooms together with generous additional volumes, terraces and an exterior ramp. These areas make it possible to occupy the school beyond its fixed room schedule. Read alongside the housing extensions and the retained hall in Dunkerque, the school suggests a recurring distinction between meeting a brief and allowing future uses to develop. GAD’s editorial reading is to compare that capacity over time: where people can gather, move equipment or adapt their work without requiring the building to prescribe every activity.