"Architects are too often complicit in gentrification and social cleansing"

French studio Lacaton & Vassal, which was today named the winner of the Soane Medal, demonstrates how architects can work with, not against, communities and existing buildings, writes Edwin Heathcote.When architects Lacaton & Vassal were commissioned to improve the Place Léon Aucoc in Bordeaux in 1996 they didn't do much at all. In fact they left it pretty much as it was, with an instruction to do more regular maintenance and to replace some of the gravel.
It was, in its way, a pr