New Pritzker winners Lacaton and Vassal

[peterm]

“When you go to the doctor,” said Jean-Philippe Vassal, “they might tell you that you’re fine, that you don’t need any medicine. Architecture should be the same. If you take time to observe, and look very precisely, sometimes the answer is to do nothing.”

“Demolishing is a decision of easiness and short term,” said Anne Lacaton. “It is a waste of many things – a waste of energy, a waste of material, and a waste of history. Moreover, it has a very negative social impact. For us, it is an act of violence.”

I appreciate this, while acknowledging that from their European perspective, it is even more sensible.
We in the US have so much shoddy ugly, that the wrecking ball is arguably more appealing.

Of course, this brings up the monument debate. What do we do with statues of traitors like Robert E Lee? Demolish or recontextualize? Move them to the museum of racists and traitors?

“Radical in their delicacy and bold through their subtleness.” Jury statement

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesig ... zker-prize

[Roderick Grant]

In an age of demolishing public housing and replacing it with shiny new carbon-hungry developments is never about "regeneration," always about profit.

[SDR]

One thing I took away from this fascinating and passionate look at Carlo Scarpa by Edinburgh architect and Scarpa devotee Richard Murphy, was that most of Scarpa's work had to do with adding to and/or modifying existing buildings. Murphy noted that there is a lot more of this kind of thing going on in Europe---where buildings are hundreds, not dozens, of years old---than in the New World . . .

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_78_KQZiP8