Alice Guy School
Preschool, primary school and after-school care centre comprising 16 classrooms, 2 break rooms, 3 workshops, 6 activity rooms, mobility room, multi-purpose room, sports hall, library, canteen, computer room, administrative centre, catering centre, hall and courtyard, pedagogical gardens and planted terraces, 2 separate outdoor courtyards.
The Mellinet barracks is a former military site in the centre of Nantes sold to the Metropolis by the State in 2013.
The urban project, carried out by the urban planners TGTFP and Atelier Georges for Nantes Métropole Aménagement, consists of combining the conservation of certain barracks and the limit of the barracks with the surrounding St Donatien district. In this context, the new Alice Guy School will meet the needs of this emerging residential area while responding to the problem of overcrowding in the school facilities in the centre of Nantes.
The school's project develops an architectural response to specific challenges :
_A reduced plot of land imposing a compact project
_The need for playgrounds on the same level as the two schools, preschool and elementary
_An efficient construction approach that guarantees the durability of the structures and the control of energy consumption.
Given the continuity of the school's mashrabiya wall overlooked by the multi-purpose room shared with the neighbourhood, opposite the infirmary building on the left of the image.
The shift in the entrance gives way to the school's forecourt on the street. The limited height of the ground floor on the street allows the view and perception of the wooded areas of the courtyards from the neighborhood.
The entrance to the school group then finds its continuity via a wide covered passageway that accompanies users to the hall, crossing with the tiered elementary schoolyard.
All the extracurricular premises have direct access to this covered area from the entrance.
The wooden spines, which accentuate the windows and allow for the integration of external blinds, provide a certain intimacy to the rooms.
This covered space opens up widely to the preserved trees: 3 sweetgums (liquidambars) around which the preschool yard develops.
The facade of the preschool on the lower ground floor is set back slightly to protect the woodwork that descends to the ground.
The primary schools, on the high ground floor, is overhanging with woodwork on a solid panel in order to preserve the privacy of the rooms in relation to the playground of the youngest and the street on the right of the photograph.
The playground is organised into 3 distinct areas: the ball play area, the playground + central area and the planted tiers.
The management of the topography, at the centre of the project, is very clear here, and makes it possible to propose a courtyard enriched by its unevenness, which links the hall and the canteen in the lower part and the courtyard on the same level with the rooms in the upper part.
The use of brick, in keeping with the neighboring troop buildings, has allowed the development of mashrabiya walls and has found continuity in the treatment of the facades.
The coherence of the use of the material allows the proposal of a perennial materiality which will guarantee the good aging of the building within the district under construction.
The use of raw materials is continued in the treatment of the rooms: concrete walls (which also contribute to the thermal inertia of the building for summer comfort), wooden framework, wooden joinery and acoustic absorbents made of plant fibres.
Each teaching room is partially glazed onto the corridors.
The courtyard of the elementary school is a continuation of the inverted V-shaped roof of the first floor, which allows for photovoltaic production without the need for additional protective structures.
Through its glass wall, this protected space gives a view of the neighborhood, the courtyard of the smallest children below and makes the link between the teaching rooms (on the left) and the ball game area and multipurpose room (on the right).
View from the ball area: the double access control (on the left towards the school and on the right from the street) makes it possible to really share the use of the sports field and the multipurpose hall between the school and the neighborhood associations.
