A prize for humble architecture
By habit of their profession, most architects want to be famous for designing grand cultural icons. Think of Frank Lloyd Wright鈥檚 鈥淔allingwater鈥� home or Frank Gehry鈥檚 Guggenheim Museum in Spain. Yet given the winners of this year鈥檚 Pritzker Prize 鈥� considered the 鈥淣obel鈥� of architecture 鈥� the profession might be ready for a different blueprint, one that starts with humility.
The 2021 winners are Anne Lacaton and Jean-Philippe Vassal, a team in France whose work, according to the Pritzker jury, is a 鈥渄emonstration of strength in modesty.鈥� An extreme example of their work was the couple鈥檚 response to a request for a redesign of a public square in Bordeaux. Except for suggesting a coat of gravel, they said to leave the plaza alone. 鈥淓mbellishment has no place here,鈥� they wrote. 鈥淨uality, charm, life [already] exist.鈥�
鈥淚f you take time to observe, and look very precisely, sometimes the answer is to do nothing,鈥� Mr. Vassal told The Guardian.
Their modesty goes deeper than to decline a commission. They are well known for offering an alternative to a government plan to demolish a modernist 1960s apartment block in Bordeaux called Cit茅 du Grand Parc. After talking to the residents, they instead were able to extend the size of each apartment, adding a covered balcony with a winter garden 鈥� without needing to move out the tenants during construction. And for less money and less pollution.
鈥淭here is almost never a completely lost situation!鈥� said Ms. Lacaton, who says she first looks for the life already happening in a place.
They call their architecture the 鈥渘o architecture.鈥� But their rallying cry is really more restorative: 鈥淣ever demolish, never remove or replace, always add, transform, and reuse!鈥� They built a home in L猫ge, for example, around an existing forest. Trees grow inside the house.
What impressed the Pritzker jury was the couple鈥檚 refusal to believe there can be any opposition between 鈥渁rchitectural quality, environmental responsibility, and the quest for an ethical society.鈥� Their work has adjusted the definition of architecture, the jury said.
The couple learned from time working in Niger on the edge of the Sahara, where they were forced to listen to residents and rely on local materials to design homes. 鈥淓conomy 鈥� is a tool of freedom,鈥� they said. And adds Ms. Lacaton, 鈥淵ou just have to ... look at things with a little love.鈥�
Their architecture has 鈥渄emocratic spirit鈥� and is 鈥渁s transparent in its aesthetic as in its ethics,鈥� cites the Pritzker Prize. Mr. Vassal puts it more humbly: 鈥淲e don鈥檛 know what the final result will look like and we鈥檙e not going to pretend that we do.鈥�
Winston Churchill once said, 鈥淲e shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us.鈥� If architects follow the Lacaton-Vassal method, more buildings would be shaped 鈥� or sometimes simply reshaped 鈥� by the people who would actually use them. Architects wouldn鈥檛 so much lead as follow.聽聽
