Advisor: João Masao Kamita
Dissertation: Lacaton & Vassal: An analysis of the appropriation concept, its meanings and motivations in contemporary architecture
Defense date: 09/07/2018
Abstract
French architectural office Lacaton & Vassal owns a work in which the
appropriation of preexistences is recurrent: through the use of commercial
prefabricated structural systems, by incorporating the preexistent building to new
projects, and through the permanence and maintenance of the existent building. This
research is aimed to analyze such different appropriation methods and to recognize new
critical motivations, within a contemporary context, for using this strategy in the
conception of architectural projects. To this end, the objective pursued was (1) to
describe, analyze, and historically contextualize this concept; (2) to recognize the
different appropriation methods used by Lacaton & Vassal; (3) to compare this
approach to appropriation with the approach of other contemporary architects – Smiljan
Radic and Santiago Cirugeda, and (4) finally, to provide a deeper analysis of Lacaton
& Vassal’s intervention at the Palais de Tokyo (Paris), because it enlightens several
concepts that are critical of the discipline of architecture and are also, somehow, a
consequence of the core idea of appropriation, as well as they show some
contradictions within these architects’ discourse.