The project for the ARTFX Campus, a pioneering school internationally renowned in the field of digital arts and the cinema professions, is located within the Paine-Images, an outstanding site devoted to the image and to the creative industries of the Métropole Européenne de Lille.
The building was designed to fit perfectly into the urban context of which it is part: the project’s proportions and height echo the dimensions of the surrounding buildings in a four-way dialogue with the neighbouring creative sites. The campus is thus continuous with the region’s urban fabric, with its juxtaposition of remarkable industrial buildings and lower-rise lines of residential buildings.
The Campus constitutes the southern edge of this large landscaped space located in the heart of Paine Images. The external space which gives access to the building provides a link between the Campus grounds and the street. On either side of this walkway are a café, a hall of residence, a shop, and independent access to the Campus cinema and amphitheatre, thus heightening the sense that the Campus is part of the city. At the corners of the buildings, on either side of this major thoroughfare, the project’s vibrant public functions are located.
This Campus represents a major milestone in the ARTFX mission to train the future talents of the cinema and entertainment industries. It has been designed as a place for creativity, learning and living, which meets twin requirements: the need to be isolated and protected, and openness to the world outside. The same translucent metal cladding, with a play of reflections, coats the east and west façades and folds back onto the roof. It symbolises the protective aspect of the place and also gives the project a unique symbol of radiance, as befits an internationally renowned school with a reputation for openness to the world.
The project’s west façade, very extensively glazed, establishes a special relationship with the urban environment and the Studio Le Fresnoy in particular, expressing the openness of the Campus. The architecture affirms a technological image consistent with what ARTFX does and in keeping with the site’s industrial history.
The building brings together the two principal entities: the school and the student lodgings. The combination of these two components on a single site provides an ideal working and living environment for the students, who can thus make use of the school’s leading-edge facilities at any time, even outside of teaching hours, and also heightens the feeling of uniqueness here on the Campus.
On the school side, the classrooms and recording studios are arranged around the huge central atrium, the school’s vibrant heart. Designed as a forum equipped with terracing and footbridges, mezzanines and staircases, it is a place full of life, where students can meet and mingle. The central roof covering it along its length and extending across the external reception area as far as the hall of residence is a key architectural element which marks the project’s identity and strengthens the unity of the Campus by creating this link between the school and the student lodgings. This roof is pierced by four large crescent-shaped oculi to the north and south, letting in natural overhead lighting at the building’s centre.
On the accommodation side, the student lodgings are arranged around two planted patios like the superimposed beguinages connected by footbridges. The lodgings provided on the site welcome students from all over the world and offer various types of accommodation, ranging from studios to two-room apartments, as well as apartments for co-living. A long brick wall, a vestige of the former weaving mill which occupied the site in the 19th century, has been preserved and incorporated into the façade of the student hall of residence. Part of the layout of both school and hall of residence, the square created by the project constitutes a transitional space between the street and the central esplanade of the Paine Images. The ARTFX Campus thus completes the urban composition of the Paine Images urban development zone.
