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In a coup for renovation lovers everywhere, this yearâs Pritzker Prize â architectureâs highest accolade â has been awarded to a French duo whose claim to fame is having never demolished a building to construct a new one. Instead, Anne Lacaton and Jean-Philippe Vassal of Lacaton & Vassal excel at a very elevated kind of DIY.
For an arts centre in Dunkirk, for instance, they not only restored a derelict seven-storey concrete ship-building workshop, they mirrored it with an extension clad in clear polycarbonate panels to make a new complex that seems paradoxically delicate and robust.
Lacaton & Vassal turned a biscuit factory into a private home. Their approach is to work with what is already on a site.Â