Lacaton&Vassal and Flores&Prats, winners of Living Places - Simon Architecture Prize

Frédéric Druot was born on January, 31st 1958 in Bordeaux, France. He is a DPLG Architect, graduate from the Bordeaux School of Architecture in 1984. In Bordeaux, 1987, he established in association with 4 architects the architecture agency Epinard Bleu (Blue Spinach) that has been considered a front line for the French architecture of the 90’s and won the award: "Album de la Jeune Architecture." In 1991, he opened his own agency Frédéric Druot Architecture (FDA) in Paris.

The work philosophy is based on the topic of thought and scales studies are not limited and it subsists a multi disciplinary dialogue. Design, music, mode, urban design, architecture and landscape open a path of research and guide the reflection around the project idea. The problematic of housing and urban design are currently representative of the main activity of the agency. There is a particular preoccupation and care to existing situations. The economy represents a guideline in the conception and the control of architecture projects.

Awards.-

- Winner, Equerre d’argent, Le Moniteur Award 2011, Paris, for the project “Tour Bois le Prêtre”, (Social housing tower), in Paris, November 2011.
- Winner, Sustainability and Residential Innovation Award 2006, City of Madrid, for the project “Tour Bois le Prêtre”, (Social housing tower), in Paris.
- Winner, Album de la Jeune Architecture Award, 1990, France.

Lacaton & Vassal. Anne Lacaton and Jean Phillippe Vassal created the office in 1989, based in Paris. The office has a practice in France, as well as abroad, working on various buildings and urban planning programs.

Anne LACATON was born in France in 1955. She graduated from the School of architecture of Bordeaux in 1980, and got a diploma in Urban Planning at the university of Bordeaux in 1984. She is teaching as a visiting professor at the University of Madrid since 2007, and was invited in 2011 at the Ecole Polytechnique in Lausanne, as well as in Harvard GSD Studio in Paris in 2011.

Jean Philippe VASSAL was born in Casablanca, Morocco, in 1954. He graduated from the School of Architecture of Bordeaux in 1980. He worked as an urban planner in Niger from 1980 to 1985. He is professor at UdK Berlin since 2012, and has been a visiting professor at the TU in Berlin in 2007-2010, and at the Ecole Polytechnique in Lausanne in 2010-11.

Main Awards, the Grand Prix National d’Architecture, France, 2008, the Rolf Schock Prize, visual arts category, Sweden 2014, the Daylight & Building Components Award, Velum Fonden, Denmark, 2011, and the International Fellowship of the Royal Institute of British Architects in 2009, the Equerre d'Argent award 2011, with Frédéric Druot, France. Their work has been shortlisted several times and twice finalist for the Mies Van der Rohe Award, European Prize for Contemporary Architecture.

The main works completed by the office are: the FRAC, Public Contemporary Art Collection, in Dunkerque, France; the Palais de Tokyo, Paris, Site for contemporary creation ; social housing and student housing in Paris ; a music and polyvalent hall in Lille ; the Café for the Architektur Zentrum in Vienna ; a School for Business and Management in Bordeaux ; the Architecture school in Nantes, and significant housing projects in France such as the House Latapie, Bordeaux ; the House in the trees, facing Arcachon Bay, the "Cité Manifeste" in Mulhouse. They are now working on the transformation of modernist social housing : the Transformation of Tour Bois le Prêtre in Paris (with Frédéric Druot, architect), in St Nazaire la Chesnaie and in Bordeaux Grand Parc (with F Druot and Ch. Hutin, architects). All these projects are based on a principle of generosity and economy, serving the life, the uses and the appropriation, with the aim of changing the standard.

Flores & Prats is an architecture studio based in Barcelona. Established in 1998 by Eva Prats and Ricardo Flores, it is dedicated to confronting theory and academic practice with design and construction activity. The studio has been involved in several kinds of projects, especially for Public Administration through open competitions. These include residential and public buildings as well as public spaces, and also exhibition design and site-specific installations for major cultural institutions and museums such as Tàpies Foundation, Miró Foundation, and Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona. www.floresprats.com