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It Will be Beautiful Tomorrow: The Work of Lacaton & Vassal

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[Nantes School of Architecture. Via Lacaton & Vassal]

I just got around to reading a brief write-up on Parisian firm Lacaton & Vassal, posted on BD last Friday, and I’m walking away quite impressed. The firm’s philosophy — and resulting projects — combine pragmatism, poetry, and comfort. Comfort being the operative element here. After a 17 year partnership, the firm is poised to move up an echelon with two new major projects. An architecture school in Nantes (pictured) and a business school in Bordeaux.

Flexibility has been a key element in their past work, and the Nantes school is no exception. Much of the building space will remain unprogrammed, and the its primary structure will allow for an unusually high degree of flexibility — including ramps to provide automobiles with access to all three stories of the structure. An Exerpt describing the design process, from the “Il fera beau demain” exhibition catalog:

“…then – that magic moment when the images come back, when the two directions of thought are perfectly attuned, interlock, fuel one another, as if spellbound. (A) moment of euphoria and ease, as if miraculously and unconsciously the joyous, living part that gives the project its meaning had steered the laborious part (concerned with) development.

Born who knows where, experienced somewhere, far away, in Africa or elsewhere, in books of poetry and films, in smoke-filled bars, train compartments, airport concourses, an image, a persistent idea, that one waits for, that one delicately gathers up, that one protects, safeguards, forgets and finds again. It stays there throughout the project and ends up being absolutely indispensable.

Architecture will be straightforward, useful, precise, cheap, free, jovial, poetic and cosmopolitan. It’ll be nice tomorrow.”

I love these guys.

Lacaton & Vassal
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2 replies on “It Will be Beautiful Tomorrow: The Work of Lacaton & Vassal”

Hi,
greetings from Czech Republic. I just write a text about a lecture of Jean Philippe Vassal, which I have seen this summer in France. I have recorded it by my digital camera – very bad quality, but understandable.
So, maybe, I can send it to You through ftp, if You are interested.
Btw nice blog,
adam
http://aa.vslib.cz/adam

there is also a magazine called 2G with an issue devoted entirely to Lacaton and Vassal. 2G is published by Gustavo Gili Editores, Spain.

L + V have created some of my favorite contemporary architecture.

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