First the AIA Gold Medal and now the Pritzker prize?
After years of bestowing praise on the practitioners of sillytecture, the Pritzker Prize has joined the AIA in rewarding architects who are serious about addressing climate change and its concurrent social challenges.
This year’s Pritzker Prize winners, the French architects Anne Lacaton and Jean-Philippe Vassal, are committed to adaptive re-use: enhancing existing buildings rather than tearing them down—even to the point of recommending that design and construction work is not required. (Lacaton and Vassal suggested to a client that a park renovation was unnecessary, instead proposing improved maintenance of the existing space—a suggestion that was adopted.)
Although this award is clearly good news, I have one reservation. Although several articles I read on Lacaton and Vassal discuss energy savings, I found no discussion of actual energy performance. For me, EUI in kBTU/SF/year (or the SI equivalent) is the measure that all discussions of efficiency should be framed.
An article from The Guardian.
An article from The Architect’s Newspaper.
A series of projects compiled by ArchDaily.
A short video announcement of the prize, with the correct pronunciation of the winners’ names for us non-Francophones.