(BDT_13_058) Collège Nicolas Robert

Description

The school comprises two wings of accommodation, which were carefully phased around the existing buildings on the site to avoid closure of the institution during development works. The L shaped plan is on the face of it a simple organisation of lecture rooms on the three upper storeys with communal and social rooms on the ground and lower ground floor (the sloping site immerses one floor beneath ground on the short wing of the ‘L’). On the lower ground floor there is the main student entrance, which looks onto the public concourse. This important space is articulated as two broad limestone paths, which intersect at the main entrance; this provides a strong axial emphasis and a formality, which, along with the distinctive curved ‘checkerboard’ façade, suggests a corporate headquarters building rather than a school. On the main (raised) ground floor there is a separate entrance for professors with a wing for administration and the restaurant.

From the outset the architects felt it was going to be difficult to create an interesting education building within a suburban context such as this. However utilising the very lack of a context as the inspiration to do something different, they have created a landmark building which, through the adoption of strikingly modern façade treatment and a positive approach to external (public) spaces, has transformed the setting and the image of education locally. It is first and foremost a technologically advanced building, a machine for learning, however it manages to be a very humane environment at the same time; it is in scale, flexible and user friendly.

A number of key themes have informed the architecture: firstly the need for a strong architectural expression externally which is achieved by the adoption of a subtly different range of glazing and façade panels all choreographed together in white and crème renders to create an ever changing spatial glow; secondly a highly controllable interior system of fixed and openable windows (on the west façade) which controls views and enables the users to adapt and change the quality of their environment from within. Here they can either be close to the surrounding views and therefore the life of the neighbourhood, or they can be distant, cocooned within their own academic solitude. The final key theme is the adoption of a sophisticated range of active and passive sustainability devices including solar roof panels and façade shading, to provide a school which is ‘green’ with its own very contemporary style.

The main wing of accommodation, which runs the entire length of the site (over 100 metres), is orientated towards the west which means that it has direct afternoon sun for most of the year. The sun can be very low in trajectory defeating most conventional attempts to control glare and heat gain. This can be a potentially disastrous scenario in the context of teaching rooms, particularly in traditional highly glazed secondary school buildings. Here the designers have created a main façade which literally closes up to provide complete solar and glare protection. In the form of a checkerboard layout, alternately fixed and swivelling panels or flaps open or close at the flick of a switch. Not only is this a highly effective environmental device, it also allows for variations in the teaching spaces: they can be light or dark (for ICT or where images are to be projected); views out can be visible or obscured, so that at certain key times the concentration of the entire class can be focussed only onto the subject lesson; no chance for day-dreaming here. But perhaps most significantly, the rooms can benefit from that essential sense of light and shade to create different moods and an ever changing sense of space. The Italians have a word which they use in the context of painting, ‘chiaroscuro’, which brings drama and emotion into the image. In a similar way, the designers of the Collège Nicolas Robert at Vernouillet have created a school which is almost unique in its potential for variability and spatial drama, the school classroom becomes like a theatre. As many teachers will admit, effective teaching is often like being on the stage.

However, the west-facing façade is not the end of this story. Structure is in the form of a concrete post-and-beam system which is set within the external envelope so that façades are free of any solid structural elements. The appearance is of a thin skin stretched across a frame. In addition to the variable checkerboard façade, there is a more conventional treatment on the east-facing façade. It is still in the language of light metallic greys and cream hues, however it comprises horizontal, alternately solid and translucent glazed panels, which light circulation corridors and provide secondary illumination into some teaching rooms where appropriate. A similar translucent glazing system is adopted for the north-facing street, only with a second external screen of plastic Plexiglas plaques which are used as internal screening devices and part of the landscaping. Themes are constantly overlapping both inside and outside in this calm, modern learning environment.

At the rear there is an inner courtyard garden which with a large canopy reflecting the internal adjacent chill-out space, a sort of all-purpose student club which opens onto the student garden to provide an appropriate centre for the school community. Right next to this area is the sports complex. The garden itself is a semi-natural meadow with as yet young trees planted in an ordered form around the space. A steep embankment encloses the outside recreation area, which is part of the natural topography of the site. There are five metallic over-scaled benches inside the garden which are made of galvanised aluminium and appear to have dropped off the side of the building. This is an appropriate reflection of the cool interaction which is achieved between the inside and the outside, between formality and informality, and finally between the suburban setting and this important institution, the modern school.