Two award-winning French architects say they have an idea to safeguard some of Sydney’s public housing for the next 50 years.
Pritzker Prize-winning architects Anne Lacaton and Jean-Philippe Vassal say existing public housing blocks like Waterloo Estate could be extended and upgraded at a third of the cost of a knockdown rebuild.
They say tenants won’t be moved out and free space will be added at no extra cost, which residents can use for a hobby, to grow plants, collect special items, or entertain.
Housing blocks from the 1960s and ’70s, like Sydney’s Waterloo Estate, could be extended and upgraded to last another 50 years at a third of the cost of a knockdown-rebuild, say Pritzker Prize-winning architects Anne Lacaton and Jean-Philippe Vassal.
And it can be done without moving tenants out, the French architects said this week during a visit to Sydney University.
Vassal and Lacaton won the Pritzker, the world’s most prestigious architectural prize, for a series of projects where they refused to raze existing public housing, apartment blocks and museums.
“Never demolish. Always transform, with and for the inhabitant,” the couple said before the opening of an exhibition, Lacaton & Vassal: Living in the City, at the Tin Sheds Gallery in the school of architecture.
In many projects where the French architects have renovated existing blocks, they have turned dark and dingy units into light-filled spaces, as well as adding apartments within the existing estate, to cater for demand.
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The French solution for Sydney’s apartment blocks (Sydney Morning Herald)
PHOTO
A residential tower block in Bordeaux, France, that was upgraded. Photo: Phillipe Ruault.
