School of Architecture, Nantes

Project Details

Project Description

FROM THE ARCHITECTS:

In building a structure of great capacity, the project design comes up with a scheme capable of creating a set of rich and diverse situations of interest to the School of architecture, the city and the landscape.

Three decks at nine, sixteen and twenty-two meters above the natural ground level, served by a gentle sloping external ramp, progressively put the ground surface of the city in touch with the sky overhead.

A lightweight steel structure redivides the height of these main levels. It enables the spaces devoted to the program to be generously installed and creates a system adapted to their extension and their future evolution.

Linked to the spaces of the program are ample, double-height volumes with non-attributed functions, the transparent facades of which harness the sun's rays and vouchsafe the indoor climate. On the initiative of the students, teachers or visitors, these spaces become the locus of possible appropriations, events and programming. At any one moment the adaptation of the school to new interventions and its reconversion are possible.

Like a pedagogical tool, the project questions the program and the pratices of the school as much as the norms, technologies and its own process of elaboration.

Project Credits
Anne Lacaton & Jean-Philippe Vassal, architects with Florian De Pous, Frédéric Hérard, and Julien Callot, Lisa Schmidt-Colinet, Isidora Meier, architects collaborators with Setec Bâtiment (concrete structure, systems), CESMA (metal structure), E2I (cost estimate), Jourdan (acoustics), Vulcanéo (fire security)
Program :
school of architecture for 1 000 students
Surface area :
26, 837 sqm floor area including :
- 15, 150 sqm basic program
- 4, 430 sqm extra space
- 5, 305 sqm accessible
outside terraces