Groupe Scolaire NUYENS
ARCHITECTURAL EXPRESSION
On the urban level, this school island largely constitutes the northern limit of the district on the botanical garden and establishes the transition between the rue Nuyens preserved in its layout and the Jean Giono alley largely planted and skirting the garden. One of the difficulties of the program was to keep the length of the site enlarged and backfilled within the framework of the new urban plan. Working on the voids, the site-wide framing, the imperative continuity of the altimetry, using the length in the routes, to maintain homogeneity on this island, fueled the design of the project. The maintenance of the existing rue Nuyens served as a basis for the new organization and allowed a rebalancing of the two schools. The school group seems to have two faces, one, traditional on rue Nuyens and a totally contemporary one on allée Jean Giono and more from the botanical garden with over the entire length of the site, the alternation of walls suspended above it. 'a concrete block base and fully glazed facades on the courtyard.
The new constructions are positioned in second layer in front of the preserved parts. On the elementary side, the new extensions of the classes and workshops rise in front of the existing parts to create the courtyard. They create a frame on the courtyard and the garden, and through the light and the space thus created, give a new face to the preserved buildings. Circulations take place in this in-between, made up of new and old parts. Interiorized spaces, they offer a route where visual escapes succeed one another on the city or the park and the roofs of the school group. There, the two interventions, that of the new and that of the old, collide.
ELEMENTARY SCHOOL
On the nursery side, the main extension containing classes and workshops, is conversely placed on the ground, allowing the characteristic attic of the Jules Ferry school to emerge, which contains the staff accommodation upstairs. On the ground floor, the parts kept in the kindergarten acquire a greater interiority and scales and lights adapted to early childhood. "Visual corridors" put the two schools, however very distinct, in a very strong relationship. The raised courtyards isolate traffic from the public highway and put us in direct contact with the foliage of the botanical garden.
NURSERY SCHOOL
The entire cluster program (nursery assistance relay and toy library) was housed in the west wing of the existing buildings kept for kindergarten. The desire was to treat this small equipment in the same architectural continuity as the school group. The initial space of this wing has been hollowed out. The suspended floor allows, in spite of the density of the program, to give a clear space to the toy library and the circulations (which opens on the outside space). This takes advantage of the vast views of the site from the nursery school courtyard. The stone wall in the parking lot has been preserved and repaired. The small courtyard that it protects was used for the presentation of the games in the toy library. It is illuminated throughout by overhead lighting.
THE EARLY CHILDHOOD POLE
The structure of new buildings is entirely metallic. The floors are in collaborative bins. The roofs of new buildings are of two types, insulating steel troughs or waterproofing support steel troughs. The metal allows this architecture of large awnings, overhangs and soffits. On the elementary side, the structure is partly suspended from the "PRS" present along the passageway of the 1st floor, in order to limit the posts in the large courtyard on the ground floor for reasons of use and architectural reasons. Suspended sails form surfaces aligned with the Jean Giono alley. They punctuate this limit of the school group on the botanical garden in full / empty, closing / opening. The techniques used for this project are traditional. The implementation of this project is based on two types of intervention:
- intervention on the existing buildings preserved
- intervention in nine. In both cases, independence of structures and interventions is sought. In the existing parts that have been preserved, contact with the old structures is enhanced (stone, wooden joists in the ceiling, etc.). All of the exterior joinery overlooking rue Nuyens has been redone in wood. Placed bare of the facade, the interior paintings of these openings are dressed in wood and fitted with shutters made in the same wood.
