urbanmakers

tight curves
“It is no exaggeration to say that school is a place that marks our existence “for life”: the start of the school year in the first grade, then the first year of primary school, first impressions due to the change of scale of life in a community… From the very first year, we experience this singular universe which will be for a few years the framework for learning, discoveries and founding experiences. Space, light, atmosphere, materiality and even smells participate in this striking experience. Lived in everyday life, it must obviously be positive and fulfilling: it is in a sensitive, sensual and embodied approach that we place our approach. »
In a marked topography, which pours out from the eponymous street, the Coudray site forms a vast complex dedicated to the service of the people of Nantes. The buildings that make it up – a neighbourhood school and a sports complex – are part of a high-quality landscape that forms a real urban breath of fresh air.
Based on a legible and functional organisation, the project proposes an architecture that develops the imagination, the aesthetic sense and the anchoring in reality. Identifiable and warm, its writing contributes to the new personality of the site, almost sixty years after its construction. As a counterpoint to the functionalist rigour of the existing buildings erected in the 1950s, it deploys a play of curves and events – roofs and windows – which are discovered as one walks along. On the parvis-promenade that stretches to the north, the volume describes a playful universe, whose curved lines gradually lead to the entrance of the school.
The curves are taut and follow one another in a play of roofs which stand out poetically against the perfectly tuned background of the existing building. The roofs, which are particularly visible due to the inscription in the slope, are carefully treated. We did not use bright colours, but a soft palette and materials in natural tones. The ground floor of the school forms a mineral base of light-coloured bricks. It seemed appropriate to us to implement constructive elements whose scale speaks to the children: one can easily apprehend the size of a brick with one’s hand. The use of wood is based on the same approach of authentic and meaningful materiality. We are convinced that this choice is a pledge of durability and a gentle inscription in the neighbourhood.
Our proposal makes extensive use of wood, both for the renovation of existing façades and for the construction of new extensions. This choice anchors the Coudray school group in its time, that of increased consideration for biosourced and decarbonated materials. It also makes sense in terms of the phasing of operations and the reduction of nuisances on the site (the new elements being prefabricated in the workshop).

program restructuring and extension of a school client city ​​of Nantes area 3200m² cost 7.4M€HT work full service phase completed project development BIM french energy label E3-C0 / biobased materials level 1 © Atypix (Groupe Angevin)