Lacaton & Vassal Wins Le Prix Charlotte Perriand 2027

On 2 November 2026, Créateurs Design Association (CDA) announced that it had selected Lacaton & Vassal Architectes as the winner of Le Prix Charlotte Perriand 2027. The award will go to the French architecture studio, led by Anne Lacaton and Jean-Philippe Vassal, for its work transforming and improving existing buildings. The ceremony will be held on 16 January 2027 at the Shangri-La Paris in Paris.

Existing buildings at the heart of the award

Le Prix Charlotte Perriand was established in collaboration with the late architect’s family to recognize practitioners whose contributions stand out in architecture and design. In announcing the decision, CDA co-founder Meredith Xavier highlighted the care and imagination Lacaton & Vassal bring to the spaces people inhabit. Xavier’s remarks also drew attention to the opportunities that understanding the qualities of existing buildings can offer in the design process.

CDA frames the studio’s work as a contribution to contemporary architecture through an approach that transforms and improves existing buildings. The award citation links better living conditions with the preservation of resources and architectural heritage. The selection therefore recognizes not only the creation of a new design, but also the quality of the relationship established with the existing building.

From housing transformations to cultural buildings

Founded in 1989, Lacaton & Vassal Architectes has worked on projects including the transformation of the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, the Nantes School of Architecture and the Cité du Grand Parc housing transformation in Bordeaux. The Grand Parc project, which also involved Frédéric Druot and Christophe Hutin, won the European Union Mies van der Rohe Award in 2019.

Among the studio’s housing projects is the renovation of Tour Bois-le-Prêtre in Paris, carried out with Frédéric Druot. Work on the building, which dates from the 1960s, was completed in 2011. In Dunkirk, a former shipbuilding workshop was transformed and extended for reuse as the FRAC Nord-Pas de Calais contemporary art gallery. The extension of Latapie House with polycarbonate panels is another example of the studio’s interventions in existing buildings.

Lacaton & Vassal received the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 2021 and the Soane Medal in 2023. Anne Lacaton was awarded the 2025 Jane Drew Prize for Women in Architecture. At the same ceremony in 2027, architect Kengo Kuma will also receive the Andrée Putman Lifetime Achievement Award.

Implications for architecture and visualization workflows

For architecture and interior design teams working on existing-building transformations, the subject of the award is a reminder of the importance of showing both which qualities of a building are being preserved and where changes are being made when explaining design decisions. This is not a workflow explicitly defined by the award; rather, it is a framework for reflecting the approach to preservation and improvement highlighted in the source in the way a project is presented.

Visualization teams can also focus on clearly distinguishing the existing conditions from the proposed intervention in their presentations. The source does not specify any software, hardware, licensing terms or file compatibility related to the award. The news should therefore be viewed in terms of architectural approach and project communication, rather than changes to technical infrastructure.