Forms of Freedom

Swiss architecture theorist Philip Ursprung will have a dialogue with French architect Anne Lacaton, a Pritzker Prize winner from 2021. They will discuss forms of freedom in architecture and selected projects of the renowned studio Lacaton & Vassal.

Philip Ursprung (ETH Zürich)

Philip Ursprung is a respected architectural theorist. He studied art history, general history and German in Geneva, Vienna and Berlin. He has taught at the Hochschule der Künste in Berlin, Columbia University in New York and the Institute of Architecture in Barcelona. He was a visiting curator at the Canadian Center for Architecture in Montreal, and has now been a professor of art and architecture history at the prestigious ETH University of Zurich, where he was dean of the Institute of Architecture between 2017 and 2019. He is the author of several theoretical books and also exhibitions, for example to the Swiss studio Herzog & de Meuron.

Anne Lacaton (Lacaton & Vassal)

Anne Lacaton founded together with Jean-Phillip Vassal the Lacaton et Vassal architectural atelier in 1987 in Bordeaux, which is currently operating in Paris. The studio has won many awards, including the National Grand Prix for Young and Beginning Architects (1999). In 2021, both architects became laureates of the Pritzker Prize. Their major projects include the School of Architecture in Nantes (2009), FRAC Dunkerque (2013) or Transformation of 530 dwellings (2016). 9 years ago, Anne Lacaton gave a lecture for the KRUH association on the topic of Experience from Space.