“NEVER demolish, never remove or replace, always add, transform and reuse.”

That’s the mission statement of French architects Lacaton, Vassal, Druot, Hutin (LVDH), and its validity has been recognised at the highest level, with partners Anne Lacaton and Jean-Phillipe Vassal being awarded the prestigious Pritzker prize, the equivalent to a Nobel in architecture.

Customarily it goes to a new build, but in a break with tradition this year it's been awarded to LVDH for renovation work.

“The modernist hopes and dreams to improve the lives of many are reinvigorated through their work, which responds to the climatic and ecological emergencies of our time as well as social imperatives,” the jury stated, adding that the LVDH architectural practice is “as strong in its forms as in its convictions, as transparent in its aesthetic as in its ethics.”

The pioneering solutions put into practice by LVDH in public housing in Paris and Bordeaux should be embraced by our own public sector. In Britain, many councils succumb meekly to the forked-tongued blandishments of developers obsessively enamoured with the wrecking ball.

There are serious financial benefits in the LVDH approach. The French authorities allocated £144,000 for the demolition of each flat in Bordeaux and Paris. But LVDH offered to renovate three flats for the same amount and made good their promise.

Their methodology was as ingenious as it was simple, functional and elegant. The blocks of flats were wrapped with a new “skin” of glass, creating an insulating overcoat of covered balconies, widening each flat by three metres and hugely enhancing the quality of life.

Much housing demolition in Britain is about gentrification and making a swift buck, with social tenants ruthlessly uprooted and scattered to the winds. Local people in Toxteth in Liverpool, Sheffield’s Hyde Park estate and Heygate in London have experienced what, sadly, is not just a Tory proclivity.

“Demolishing is a decision of easiness and the short term,” says Anne Lacaton. “It is a waste of many things — of energy, material and history. Moreover, it has a very negative social impact. For us, it is an act of violence.”

Ironically, the graceful Central Hill — a social-housing estate of 450 flats in Lambeth, one of the very few to have been designed by a female architect, Rosemary Stjernstedt — is about to face the “violence and waste of history” alluded to by Lacaton.

The Pritzker choice, significant in itself, hardly heralds the kind of seismic change needed around decision-making on social housing.

But it will, hopefully, give heart to those readying for the battles that lie ahead, who understand the financial and environmental benefits of reconstruction rather than razing to the ground.