The inner world
The Jean Lurçat middle school in Saint-Denis is located at the intersection of two landscapes. A poorly structured housing estate that constitutes the identity of the neighborhood and the Parc des Sports that opens onto the landscaped park of La Courneuve and offers the college an open perspective and a strong link with the green spaces of the city. The college is in the heart of nature and on the edge of the residential pavilions.
The urban challenge here is to fit into the site without screening the park, to create an urban composition that articulates the domestic scale of the houses with that of the equipment by offering the neighborhood a visual and structuring landmark. This reflection led us to conceive the college as a group of pavilions in a park. This configuration, broken down into different fragments, allows for a better identification of each of the teaching buildings and offers a porous reading of the college that is well integrated into the landscape. These fragments, oriented north-south for optimal sunlight, are laid out on the site following the existing topographical curves. They are unified by open exterior spaces, a punctuation, a void. The pleated roof takes up the aesthetics of the cut sections by introducing variations in the rhythm to create colored vibrations and a different light for each pavilion.