School complex (22 classrooms) & 60 housing units
Accommodating a school complex, housing units, and a parking facility is a challenge that runs counter to the traditional idea of buildings conceived for a single, dedicated use. This involves designing a versatile, multi-purpose structure.
It is a vision of urban planning that stands in opposition to the spatial hyperspecialization that afflicts certain cities. The challenge is to combine several uses in a single location where functional diversity, programmatic flexibility, scalability, and reversibility are all solutions designed to rethink and invent a new way of experiencing the city. This approach is part of a new model of sustainable urban development. It promotes the “short-distance” city, reduces spatial inequalities in terms of the services offered by the city, and thereby improves the well-being of residents while encouraging compactness.
The environmental dimension is fundamental here. This programmatic interweaving is a response to the imperative of density, which is at the heart of today’s environmental debate. It requires a necessary hybridization that responds to the desire to limit urban sprawl, avoid soil artificialization, and even de-impermeabilization. This density will be all the more acceptable as it is combined with intimacy and diversity. Intimacy requires careful consideration of the visual relationships between the different programs. As for diversity, it is expressed through a play of volumes and heights, the creation of distinctive forms, and a calibrated balance between each of the components.
As part of this urban renewal, the complex program interweaving a school complex, housing, and a parking facility conveys the idea of a new mix: a contribution of both programmatic and architectural richness. This quest for intensity brings spatial and urban qualities and constitutes a real vector of typological diversity.
