2G 60 Lacaton & Vassal : Recent Work

"With professional careers of more than twenty years behind them, French architects Anne Lacaton and Jean Philippe Vassal continue to pursue their own coherent, personal approach to architecture.

Theirs is a position far removed from formal originality, focusing instead on an ethical conception that upholds the idea of an architect's social responsibility: they have constructed an allusively simple discourse that embraces the complexity of contemporary reality.

The few carefully chosen issues that interest them are tantamount to a wish to go beyond paradigms established by the market.

This issue of 2G presents a number of their most famous projects, including the Bois-le-Pretre tower block in Paris, a built example of their investigation into how to act on obsolete blocks of flats from the 1960s and 70s in France; two multi-family housing projects in Saint-Nazaire; and the School of Architecture in Nantes.

It also presents projects on a city scale, such as an urban plan for Dublin, their proposal for the Porte de la Chapelle, and the La Vecquerie eco-area in Saint-Nazaire."