Description

In 2020, Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara, curators of the 16th Venice Architecture Biennale 2018, were awarded the Pritzker Prize for their work. Their Dublin-based practice Grafton Architects was responsible for the Toulouse School of Economics research building. The old city center of Toulouse is characterized by Roman bricks, ranging in shade from pink to orange, as well as by massive natural stone buildings. On Place Saint-Pierre on the banks of Garonne River, past the medieval church of Saint-Pierre-des-Cuisines, a mysterious portal catches the eye, consisting of a two-storey ambulatory and two gable walls in brick. Its monumental impression is enhanced by only a few openings. The research center of the Toulouse School of Economics (TSE) appears like a fortress and yet offers views from all sides into the central forum. Its triangular site had previously only served as a car park for a neighbouring student hall of residence. The competition for the new center was won by Grafton Architects, known for “critical architecture” or “critical practice”, a context-related authorial approach to architecture that is strongly anchored in theory.

In Toulouse, the precise attention to the site is expressed in the various facets of the building. To the west a monumental brick gable wall marks the boundary of the site. The axis of the building forms an angle, revealing a colonnade on the ground floor. A solid medieval wall encloses the seven-hectare site of the University of Toulouse. The building recedes from this wall and the façade consists here of vertical strips of windows at regular intervals. The mighty buttresses of brick originate from a concrete bracket that is embedded in the masonry on the third floor. The façade facing the tree-lined avenue bends away from the boundary of the site, and a two-storey plinth supports the four upper storeys. The vertical brick surfaces are arranged at a 45-degree angle, giving them a striking ribbed structure. Yet another façade is characterised by a discreet alternation in the window grid between the base and the upper floors. Overall, the new building appears from the outside as a composition along two axes: on the one hand, the three horizontally oriented, fanned-out blocks, with their compact gable walls at the boundaries of the triangular plot. On the other side, there is the arrangement in bands of two storeys each – a leitmotif that is noticeable in numerous buildings in Toulouse. The dimensioning of the façade structure as well as the distribution of the brises-soleil contribute to solar protection.

The use of Toulouse brick, the heritage from Roman times, required considerable effort on the part of the building contractors and the local Terres Cuites du Saves brickworks. The exterior walls are made of bricks measuring 42 x 10 x 5 cm over a height of almost 25 m. Flat bricks in the format 42 x 28 x 5 cm, with recesses for reinforcing steel, form sunshades in the staircases, while facing bricks of 42 x 3 x 5 cm are used for some special cases such as the cladding of the narrow struts of the walkways. The services are hidden in the basement, including the heat exchangers, which use the water from the Garonne to heat and cool the building. In order to create flexible, open-plan upper floors, the pre-stressed beams are 10.8 m long and form column-free interior spaces in which the concrete ceiling slabs contribute to thermal regulation.

Inside, the building reveals a bright concrete world of Piranesian quality. Here, the architects stage the idea of academic research that is open to the outside and combine it with an architecture which can be seen as a legacy of Brutalism. The program is that of a research center with almost 200 individual study cells and a number of shared rooms, including six lecture halls, a cafeteria and a meeting room. The rooms that are open to the public are located on the ground floor and are arranged around a small triangular square that connects with Place Saint-Pierre via a concrete ramp in the axis of the monumental portal. The study rooms are located on eight floors on either side of narrow corridors. The hub of the building is the foyer with its very impressive vertical circulation. A multitude of walkways, staircases, terraces and inner courtyards heighten the visual effect, which constantly alternates between views from above and below. This celebration of verticality contrasts with the simplicity and efficiency of the floor plans. Thus the researcher alternates between the familiar comfort of his or her cell, with the sun-protected windows framing the view, and the open corridors that create an opportunity for random interdisciplinary encounters.

Originally published in Bauwelt 11.2020, pp. 22-31, abridged and edited for Building Types online, translated by Julian Reisenberger

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