Anne Lacaton "Transformation, no demolition". Public lecture

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Academy of Architecture

Date: 24 November 2022 / 19:30 - 22:00

Public Lectures 2022/23

 

A case for the urban
Lecture program curated by the Institute of Urban and Landscape Studies ISUP
 

Anne Lacaton
Transformation, no demolition
make do with what we have
 

Introduction by Jonathan Sergison, Director ISUP

Thursday, 27 November 2022 7:30 p.m.
Teatro dell'architettura Mendrisio

 

Anne Lacaton manages together with her partner Jean-Philippe Vassal the international architecture practice Lacaton&Vassal based in Paris. Their work spans from public buildings and housing to urban planning. Main projects completed by the office comprise the regional contemporary art center FRAC in Dunkerque, the renovation of the contemporary Art museum Palais de Tokyo in Paris, the Architecture School in Nantes, the Viennese Café at Museumsquartier in Vien, transformations of modern social housing like the Tour Bois-le-Prêtre in Paris or the Cité du Grand Parc in Bordeaux, as well as numerous collective and individual housing projects like the house Latapie in Bordeaux, the house in the trees in the bay of Arcachon, the Cité Manifeste in Mulhouse or the social and student housing in Paris. All projects are based on a principle of generosity and economy, serving the life, the uses and the appropriation, with the aim of changing the living standard. Between 2000 and 2017 Anne was guest professor at various universities, for example in Madrid, Oslo, at EPFL Lausanne, Harvard GSD and TU Delft. Since July 2017, she is professor of Architecture and Design at the ETH Zürich. 
 

A case for the urban
The series will be useful in outlining the context in which the architect will operate in the various political and cultural, national and European (and other) changing contexts. Indeed, the transformations of society are in a very strong interdependent relationship with the changes of the physical city and territories, their spatial organization, and the formal and the functional aspects of buildings and public infrastructure. Understanding how this relationship transfers into design approaches is doubtless one of the central topics of the discourse on architecture today.

In fact, as introduced by Prof. Jonathan Sergison, director of ISUP and curator of this series of public lectures: '...if our school can be understood as one that positions itself within a humanist tradition, it follows that the social function of architecture should be seen in relation to cities, urban forms of responsibility and societal consciousness...'

 

Free entrance subject to availability

The Lecture is also streamed live on www.arc.usi.ch