Lunch with an Architect is intended as a forum for reflection and discussion to improve the quality of architecture in Brussels.

Through 3 meetings a year, Lunch with an Architect, in cooperation with Flagey, provides the real estate world with a window on the major contemporary events in the world of architecture, the more specifically Belgian issues, and the emblematic projects under way.

Jean-Philippe Vassal and Anne Lacaton joined forces in 1987 to create the firm Lacaton & Vassal.

Particularly sensitive to the soul of the places they indwell, Anne Lacaton and Jean-Philippe Vassal consider themselves as architects not intent on creating sophisticated architectural objects. They attach the utmost importance to the notion of inhabiting which, with the context, constitutes the starting point of their project. Their prime tenet is to consider space from the interior to the exterior so as to transcend the scale of the dwelling and attain the urban dimension.

Their philosophy is to work on the economy of means without however falling into a standardized architecture devoid of meaning. Quite the contrary, they believe that designing with due consideration for the cost, means and resources, “stimulates the intelligence (…) to do the most possible with the least possible.”

Their projects pertain to the individual dwelling, social housing and public commissions. Their most emblematic projects include: the FRAC Nord Pas de Calais, the industrial site of the Palais de Tokyo, the School of Architecture in Nantes, the extension of the Tour Bois le Prêtre social housing complex, and more recently that of the Grand Parc in Bordeaux – projects for which they have won numerous prizes: the Grand Prix National de l’architecture [National Grand Prize for Architecture] and the Équerre d’argent [Silver Saure], and above all, in 2019, the prestigious Mies van der Rohe prize.

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