Lacaton & Vassal wins Le Prix Charlotte Perriand 2027

The Créateurs Design Association & Awards has named Pritzker Prize-winning French studio Lacaton & Vassal Architectes the recipient of Le Prix Charlotte Perriand 2027.

The award ceremony takes place on 16 January 2027 at the Shangri-La Paris. Architect Kengo Kuma will also be honoured at the event, as winner of the Andrée Putman Lifetime Achievement Award 2027.

The Créateurs Design Association (CDA), which presents the prize, recognised the studio — led by architects Anne Lacaton and Jean-Philippe Vassal — for contributing to contemporary architecture by transforming and improving existing buildings. The CDA said the studio's work improves "living conditions while preserving resources and architectural heritage".

What does the prize recognise?

Le Prix Charlotte Perriand was established in collaboration with the family of the late architect. It recognises practitioners whose contributions have advanced architecture and design. Previous winners include Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa of SANAA, who took the 2025 edition.

CDA co-founder Meredith Xavier said: "In awarding Le Prix Charlotte Perriand to Lacaton & Vassal, the CDA members recognise the care and imagination with which they approach the places people call home. Their work shows how much can be gained by understanding what is already there."

How did the architects respond?

Lacaton and Vassal said they were "very happy" to receive the distinction, and pointed to the prize's namesake as a continuing influence.

"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," the duo said.

"Her manifest spirit of openness and freedom touches us deeply. We are very happy to receive this distinction."

A catalogue built on renovation

The duo founded their studio in 1989. They've since built a practice around transforming and extending existing structures rather than demolishing them, with social housing as a recurring focus.

Key projects include:

• The transformation of the Palais de Tokyo in Paris
• The Nantes School of Architecture
• The Cité du Grand Parc housing transformation in Bordeaux, completed with Frédéric Druot and Christophe Hutin, which won the European Union's Mies van der Rohe Award in 2019
• The renovation of the 1960s Tour Bois-le-Prêtre tower block in Paris, also with Druot, completed in 2011
• The conversion and extension of a former shipbuilding workshop into the FRAC Nord-Pas de Calais contemporary art gallery in Dunkirk
• The Latapie House expansion, built with polycarbonate panels (a lightweight, translucent plastic material)

An accumulating trophy shelf

Le Prix Charlotte Perriand joins a growing list of honours for the studio. Lacaton & Vassal won the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 2021 and the 2023 Soane Medal for architecture. Anne Lacaton separately won the 2025 Jane Drew Prize for women in architecture.

The January ceremony will place the Paris-based duo alongside Kengo Kuma on the same stage, pairing the year's top honour with its lifetime achievement award.