The French solution for Sydney’s apartment blocks

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.

Anne Lacaton and Jean Philippe Vassal have won the world’s most prestigious architectural prize.Credit: Dominic Lorrimer

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.

Lacaton said they were originally motivated by the French government’s proposal to demolish and rebuild 200,000 public housing units. “We didn’t understand why after 40 or 50 years, they should be demolished,” she said.

Working with architect Frederic Druot on the Bordeaux Grand Parc project, Lacaton & Vassal renovated three blocks - ranging from 10 to 15 floors - of 530 social housing units in a way that would extend the building’s life for 50 years, add more free space, and improved insulation against heat and cold.

The renovation won the 2019 EU Prize for Contemporary Architecture, the Mies van der Rohe Award.

The architects also want to spread their philosophy of generosity and kindness in architecture.

That’s typified by adding “free space” at no extra cost that residents can use for a hobby, to grow plants, collect special items or entertain.

The Waterloo housing estate could be part of a French revolution of housing.Credit: Louise Kennerley

In one video, an elderly resident is shown saying how much she loves to “promenade”, or walk up and down her little balcony and through her sunroom.

Lacaton said the cost before COVID-19 was €55,000 ($91,000) per apartment. “For the cost of one demolition and rebuild, we could transform three existing apartments,” she said.

It was done without requiring any tenants to move out, and only three days of inconvenience for each unit. A wing, on its own foundations, containing the balconies and sunrooms was added to each side of the towers.

Lacaton and Vassal opened the facades by adding a small balcony and a large “wintergarden” (like an Australian sunroom) to provide a generosity of space.

As well as adding more light and bigger windows, community spaces such as play areas for children are often improved, the couple said in the Rothwell Chair Public Lecture at Sydney University.

For the past three years, the couple have visited Australia regularly as the inaugural co-chairs of the Rothwell Chair in Architectural Design Leadership. It was funded by the university’s alumni Garry and Susan Rothwell to use architecture to create environments that improve people’s quality of life.

They say urbanism begins inside each apartment, with quality housing for everyone.

Vassal said when free space was provided, people quickly used it, were very creative, much happier and content.

The Ivry-sur-Seine Social Housing Complex in Paris was a collaboration between Renee Gailhoustet and Jean Renaudie, who inspired Lacaton and Vassal.

At a social housing project in Toulouse in France, they doubled the space of each apartment for the same cost by adding a big loft with a wintergarden.

“We wanted to increase the space. Because two bedrooms 65 square metres, the standard, seems to us too small to have a nice life, to be [happy] in the family, to have freedom of being together and also apart,” Lacaton said.

Architect Tone Wheeler said the Lacaton & Vassal approach could work in Australian public and social housing blocks that lacked balconies and had small windows that “made the smaller apartments feel even smaller”.

The fact tenants could remain in place was the most important thing, said Wheeler, the president of the Australian Architecture Association, and the design director of Environa Studio that specialises in social and sustainable architecture.

University of Sydney architecture students in front of the “Merci Renee” banner made by residents of the social housing renewal project Ivry-Sur-Seine. Credit: Andrea Muller

Local lobby group Action for Public Housing has been inspired by the French architects and is pushing for retention and refurbishment of the Waterloo Estate.

Lacaton said they believed Waterloo could be transformed while keeping residents in their homes. She stressed no two projects or buildings were the same and the situation would have to be studied carefully first.

Dr Alistair Sisson of Macquarie University said there hadn’t been any projects of the size of the Grand Parc in Australia, but there had been other upgrades to public housing. The Matavai and Turanga towers in Waterloo had been constructed as bedsits, but in the late 1990s and early 2000s about 40 per cent of floors across the two 30-storey buildings were converted to two-bedroom apartments.

As part of the Rothwell Chair project, Sydney University architecture students visited France to see some renewal projects by Lacaton & Vassal, plus others that had inspired them.

That included the Ivry-sur-Seine social housing project in Paris, by the late French architect Renée Gailhoustet who had lived and designed the Brutalist project.

Christian Sheridan, who is doing a Masters in architecture at Sydney University, said no two apartments were the same, and each one had an outdoor space or garden where neighbours met and chatted.

Sheridan met residents like Cecile, who told him that she was born at Ivry and wanted to die there.

When they visited, a giant banner hung outside the flat that said “Merci Renee” where Gailhoustet had lived until she died last year.

“It was very moving,” Lacaton said. Asked if they had ever been thanked with a large banner, Vassal replied, “Not yet, but we are not dead.”

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