Interview > Anne Lacaton (1/3)

by Cecilia Bayo | 2012 february 14

With a professional career of more than twenty years behind them, French architects Anne Lacaton & Jean Philippe Vassal continue to pursue their own coherent, personal approach to architecture. Theirs is a position far removed from formal originality, being based, instead, on an ethical conception that upholds the essential idea of the architect’s social responsibility.

Lacaton & Vassal have constructed a discourse of their own that, although seemingly simple, embraces the complexity of contemporary reality. The few, carefully chosen issues that interest them are tantamount, in themselves, to a wish to go beyond paradigms established by the market. The strategies that shape their work might be summed up as understanding the real needs of the client without formal preconceptions, inventing supplementary extra space through intelligent use of the budget (cost-effectiveness as a planning tool), fomenting freedom of use on the part of users, endowing buildings with flexibility, creating controlled climatic environments by means of technology and simple materials, and the ambition to influence the urban planning of the city through architectural design.

0300TV interviewed Anne Lacaton in her Paris studio, and have given us exclusive access to the video. This is the first part.

Part II: Interview > Anne Lacaton (2/3): Nantes School of Architecture
Part III: Interview > Anne Lacaton (3/3): PLus, social housing transformations

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