Pritzker Prize laureates Anne Lacaton and Jean-Philippe Vassal have been announced as the recipients of the Charlotte Perriand Award 2027, known formally as Le Prix Charlotte Perriand. The Créateurs Design Awards (CDA) organizes the prize every year and uses a peer-led voting process to recognize practitioners whose contributions have advanced architecture and design. For this eighth edition, the organization singled out the French studio as a demonstration of “how the adaptation of existing structures can improve living conditions while preserving resources and architectural heritage.”
18 logements, Rixheim (Mulhouse), France. Image Courtesy of Philippe Ruault
The honor places Lacaton & Vassal in a line of earlier recipients that includes Xu Tiantian, Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa, Frida Escobedo, and Jeanne Gang. It also sits within one of the broader major architecture awards calendars of the year, since the CDA program covers 15 categories and two Legacy Awards. Those categories span architecture, interior design, product design, curation, photography, journalism, digital art and related disciplines, which makes the Perriand prize one part of a wide-ranging program.
Lacaton & Vassal will receive the prize alongside Kengo Kuma, who is the recipient of the Andrée Putman Lifetime Achievement Award 2027. Both distinctions carry the names of influential French women whose work helped shape modern architecture and design. The Perriand prize recognizes the duo’s contribution to contemporary architecture “and their commitment to improving the quality of everyday life through the transformation and preservation of existing buildings.” The CDA also praised the care and imagination with which the pair approach the places people call home, adding that their architecture shows how much can be gained by understanding what is already there.
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That reputation rests on a practice founded in 1989, after Anne Lacaton and Jean-Philippe Vassal finished their studies at the École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture de Bordeaux. Their notable works include the transformation of the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, carried out in 2002 and 2012, and the Nantes School of Architecture, completed in 2009. They also transformed the Cité du Grand Parc housing in Bordeaux with Frédéric Druot and Christophe Hutin, a project that shows how small, singular operations can have a significant infrastructural impact. Much of this work, including projects across France, centers on the reuse of buildings that already exist.
FRAC, Région Hauts de France, Dunkerque, France. Image Courtesy of Philippe Ruault
The architects responded to the news by pointing to Perriand’s own legacy. In their words, “Charlotte Perriand’s tireless pursuit of comfort, well-being, and the pleasure of the inhabitant and of everyday life, her modernity, and her political commitment to exposing poor housing conditions and to transmission and education remain profoundly relevant today and are a source of inspiration. Her manifest spirit of openness and freedom touches us deeply. We are very happy to receive this distinction.”
Ecole d’architecture, Nantes, France,. Image Courtesy of Philippe Ruault
In the CDA’s own words, Lacaton & Vassal has “advanced an architectural approach grounded in spatial generosity, environmental responsibility and respect for the people who inhabit buildings” for more than three decades. The prize will be presented at a ceremony on January 16, 2027, at the Shangri-La Paris. Submissions for the 2027 Créateurs Design Awards remain open across 15 categories, and the deadline has been extended to November 22, 2026.
Mireille Chevalier is a projects editor and architectural writer from Lyon. With a dual background in architecture and history, she brings a contextual lens to design criticism and theory