Located in a peri-urban area, on the border between the CHRU and Lille Sud, the project’s main challenge is that of its integration in a sparsely populated environment undergoing major restructuring. The participation in the urban mutation movement implied the redefinition of the current plot.
The operation includes two levels of intervention: the demolition and relocation of the Nadaud nursery school, the partial demolition and restructuring of the Briand and Buisson elementary school. With the rehabilitation and the extension of the building located in front of the Boulevard Eugène Duthoit as starting point of reflection.
To tackle the difficult urban insertion, a surrounding wall around the plot is built, erasing any direct link to its surrounding. Its layout aims at both belonging to the future system and asserting a sense of protection to a complex environment. The scale of the envelope, sign of the institutional vocation of the building, ensures an architectural coherence to the whole. Its raw character imposes itself, affirming the contemporary proposal in the urban landscape. The gesture, far from suffocating the existing context, participates in its legibility from the main axis. The extension is expressed through a set of volumes, the largest of which forms a backdrop to the original facade, a sort of link between the new and the existing.
To the radical writing of the urban interface balances with an extreme care taken in the shaping of the interior spaces. The approach allows for a unitarian reading of a project that develops its own context. A strictly orthogonal system generates this double play: between a structuring façade directed towards the city and a stimulating volume for its program. The introverted project aims to create a strong yearn for imagination and curiosity from the public space, highlighted by the use of moucharabieh. Within its walls, the project plays with the juxtaposition of contrasting elements: the built and unbuilt, gracefull and heavy, wood and concrete, light and shadow. The linear courtyards ensure a good exposure and pleasant views to all classrooms, circulations and common areas.
The base of the building finds a new meaning through a large reception area. Like a plinth, the forecourt ennobles the image of the old building while regulating the difference in level between the street and the first floor. Its pavement in continuity with the sidewalk ensures the uniformity of the urban space. The relationship between the existing volume and the created volumes was the subject of careful adjustments. The space defined between the old and the new is conceived as an "interior street" whose double height is animated by a set of footbridges. The hall, the only East-West crossing of the project, generates the accesses of the nursery and primary schools at its ends. The system allows for a logical division of the two sections: the youngest pupils are welcomed on the first floor and the older ones have access to the spaces dedicated to them on the first floor via the courtyard.
The use of limited formal and architectural means and devices brings a right answer to the program and the site. The union of a massive single-story structure and deposited volumes respects a rigorous harmony of proportions. The deliberate absence of visual clinging to the context creates an ambiguous work, rich in multiple games between abstraction and expression, between autonomy and context. The value of use and quality of life are fundamental to the design of the project, as is the attention to the landscapes in which the children will evolve. The distribution of these preserves the water tightness between the two schools. Each one is differentiated by varied ambiences, the nursery school being adjacent to a tree-lined patio, the elementary school dominating the "interior street".
The introversion wants to arouse a strong imagination from the public space, fed by the glances of the moucharabieh. Within its walls, the project plays with the juxtaposition of contrasts: emptiness and fullness, gracefulness and strength, wood and concrete, shadow and light. The courtyards, whose silhouette evokes monastic qualities, offer balance and serenity to the school spaces. Their long profile ensures good exposure and pleasant views for all the classrooms, corridors and common areas. The mastery of light intensifies the character of the spaces. The kindergarten courtyard, for example, is sometimes extended through the internal spaces, sometimes multiplied in its large dimension, depending on the qualities of transparency or mirroring that the light confers on the glazing.
