Pritzker Prize: French duo wins top architecture honour

Anne Lacaton and Jean-Philippe Vassal receive prestigious award for their radical work and sustainable approach towards architecture.

Undeterred even by the most urban of settings, French architects Anne Lacaton and Jean-Philippe Vassal have been awarded this year’s Pritzker Prize – architecture’s highest honour – for their designs transforming urban housing into uplifting and sustainable spaces, particularly in the context of public housing. Tom Pritzker, chairman of The Hyatt Foundation, which sponsors the prestigious award, announced the duo’s win on Tuesday. “Through their design of private and social housing, cultural and academic institutions, public spaces, and urban developments, Lacaton and Vassal re-examine sustainability in their reverence for pre-existing structures, conceiving projects by first taking inventory of what already exists,” the organisers said in a statement.