JEAN MOULIN HIGH SCHOOL

The Champagne area, the terraces… When we went to the site, we found a wide and hilly landscape, following a meandering river landscape forming a broad and distant view, breathing with early morning mists and the changing colours of the seasons. The site is a huge and ondulating landscape shaped in the meanders of the Meuse, a landscape with feminine curves, that broad and stretches far. We rebuilt one unique peace of land with this great landscape and the project, nestling in the topography and watching the magic mountains. We wanted to install in the topography, use it in order to print the new school in its context and its landscape quality, To ensure that this constraint slope becomes the main quality in the new surroundings of the new school in Revin. Exploit the topography on the hillside ensure that every user of this new college benefits from these qualities of the site, every day all by returning to this valley a quality built spaces and natural areas in line with what exists. To develop in the slope, the pattern of movement through the uneven soft ground, the elements of the program will develop ground floor in a very precise with the slope to the panoramic view of the valley of all the spaces. In the exploitation of this model to the hillside, the new high school prints its context and its qualities.

The slope constraint becomes the main quality of this new life of high school while Revin is shifting to the valley.

Jean Moulin High School is located on a hill along the river Meuse in Revin, county of Champagne, France.

The site is on a steep slope and the architects masterly turned the denivelation from a problem into the main advantage of the project. They created a “balcony in the forest”, hiding the buildings into the folds of the landscape and covering them with green roofs.

The project covers a surface of 15 000 sqm and represents a big campus, consisting of school buildings, residential area, hotel, gymnasium, etc. The classrooms are situated stepwise on the hill in the form of narrow straps, each benefiting of a panoramic view towards the river. In the center between the two “wings” of classrooms a large common space called “the agora” connects the whole building and offers versatile opportunities for different activities.

The vertical glazing of the agora is providing natural lighting for the internal 
square. This part of the school is covered, but not heated, as part of the energy saving strategy of the project. 

Jean Moulin High School is an outstanding example of an innovative architecture submerged into the landscape, respecting the context and not trying to dominate the nature, energy conscious and appealing for the young.