A French solution for high-rise apartment blocks in Sydney.

Blocks of 1960s and 1970s housing, including Sydney's Waterloo Estate, can be modernized and rebuilt to last another 50 years, at a cost of one-third the cost of demolition and new construction. This was announced by architects Ann Lakaton and Jean-Philippe Vassal, winners of the Pritzker Prize. It is possible without evicting tenants, the French architects said last week during a visit to the University of Sydney.

Anne Lacaton and Jean-Philippe Vassal have won the Pritzker Prize.

the world's most prestigious architectural prize, for a series of projects in which they refused to demolish existing public housing, apartment buildings and museums. "Never to demolish, but always to transform, in collaboration with the''to extend the life of the building by 50 years, add more open space and improve thermal and acoustic insulation. The project earned the European Union's Mies van der Rohe Prize for Contemporary Architecture.

Thanks to their philosophy of openness and kindness in architecture, the architects are adding "free space" that residents can use for hobbies, growing plants, collecting or entertaining. In one video, an elderly resident described how she likes to walk around her small balcony and garden room.

The cost of modernization

one apartment to COVID-19 was €55,000 ($91,000). "For the cost of one demolition and new construction, we were able to modernize 3 existing apartments," said''Lakaton.

Lacaton and Vassal opened up the facades, adding a small balcony and a large "winter garden room" (a space similar to a sun room in Australia) to create a generosity of space. In addition to adding more light and spacious windows, public spaces such as playgrounds are often improved, the couple said during a lecture at the University of Sydney.

The approach of Lakaton & Vassal in Australia

Architect Ton Wheeler said the Lakaton & Vassal approach could work in Australian public and''Australia has not had projects of the scale of the Grand Parc, but there have been other modernizations of public housing. The Matavai and Turanga buildings in Waterloo were built as bedroom apartments, but in the late 1990s and early 2000s about 40% of the floors in the two 30-storey buildings were converted to two-bedroom apartments. As part of the Rothwell Chair project, architecture students from the University of Sydney visited France to see a range of modernizations from Lacaton & Vassal and other projects that inspired them.

This included a social housing project in Paris in Ivry-sur-Seine by the late French architect René Guilloustet, who lived and designed Brutalist design. Christian Sheridan, a master of architecture at the University of Sydney, said each apartment was''unique and had an outdoor space or garden where neighbors met and socialized.