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“Upgrading the city, grafting the existing” – Keynote speech by Jean-Philippe Vassal at the Holcim Forum 2007 “Urban_Trans_Formation”
Jean-Philippe Vassal is a Director of Lacaton & Vassal Architectes, Paris.
In 1987, Jean-Philippe Vassal and Anne Lacaton formed architectural practice Lacaton & Vassal in Bordeaux. Lacaton & Vassal received the National Architecture Prize of the French Ministry of Culture for young talent in 1999.
The firm designed the Palais de Tokyo contemporary art gallery in Paris, completed in 2001. The project, a bare bones reclamation of a semi-derelict art deco building near the Seine, was short-listed for the Mies van der Rohe prize in 2003 and has been immensely influential as perhaps the most extreme of found-space galleries.
Openly proclaiming to be a reflection and search for architectural economy, the work undertaken by Anne Lacaton and Jean-Philipppe Vassal focuses on reduced-cost constructions in order to rejuvenate the dialogue with contracting authorities. Research on hybridizations, between a contemporary building concept and the use of the most diversified techniques, produces projects that make the most of construction programs by upsetting building contractors' standard usages.
In 2005, Lacaton & Vassal and architect Frédéric Druot were selected to reshape the Tour Bois le Prêtre, a 17-story housing tower on the city's northern edge designed by architect Raymond Lopez in 1957. The team will cut away most of the thick concrete façade's partitions, installing balconies and large sliding windows in their place. Besides opening the apartments to more natural light, the units are being significantly enlarged and opened, and the firm will install new heating, ventilation, and electric systems.
Jean-Philippe Vassal graduated from the School of Architecture, Bordeaux in 1980, and spent the following five years in Niger as an architect and town planner. He has lectured at the School of Architecture, Bordeaux (1992-1999) and at the School of Architecture, Versailles in 2002.
[last update: 21-April-2007]
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