When the cult-followed Parisian candlemaker and parfumeur Diptyque announced its expansion into skincare—dubbed “L’Art Du Soin”—we were hesitant at first. With hundreds of other brands crowding the luxury skincare…
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News: French studio LAN has won a competition to revamp the Grand Palais exhibition centre in Paris with plans to restore galleries around the Grand Nave and insert a new entrance court.
LAN proposes to restructure and restore the “original coherence and sense of transparency” of the grand Beaux Arts building, which was constructed for the World’s Fair of 1900 at the eastern end of the Champs-Elysées, and which features a barrel-vaulted glass and iron roof.
The first intervention will be to adapt entrances on the northern and southern facades. A pair of gentle ramps will follow the curvature of the existing fountain to lead visitors to the main access on Avenue du Général-Eisenhower, while the riverside entrance will serve as a dedicated arrival point for special exhibitions and the restaurant.
Both entrances will lead through to a new two-storey ambulatory between the Grand Nave and the rotunda of the adjoining Palais d’Antin. Voids in the floorplates will create double-height ceilings and stairwells, allowing the space to function as the connecting area between all exhibitions.
Existing galleries will be re-planned to allow greater flexibility, while a new exhibition space for contemporary art and live performance will be created within the Palais d’Antin.
Old bay windows and passageways will be opened up throughout the building, plus visitors will be given the opportunity to explore the roof.
“These interventions represent a unique opportunity to rediscover the traces and ways in which the Grand Palais has withstood the test of time,” said the architects. “Our credo for the New Grand Palais is to complete and strengthen its formal logic through interventions that return a sense of modernity to its whole, all the while respecting its traditional identity.”
LAN will also add spaces for logistics and car parking within a new basement storey, install a climate-control system and modernise existing systems to bring the whole building in line with current building regulations.
Here’s a more detailed project description from LAN:
Grand-Palais
The new Grand Palais: an example of modernity
To our contemporary eyes, the Grand Palais is both an idea and a symbol of modernity. It is a hybrid building in terms of its architecture, its usage and its history. Neither a museum nor a simple monument, its architecture has an identity all its own, centred around the notion of a “culture machine”, a spatial means for hosting a vast diversity of events and audiences that exponentially exalts the site’s “universal” and “republican” vocation. The restoration and restructuring of the entire monument affords us the chance to reinforce this aspiration.
The coming restructuring foresees the implementation of a new circulation mechanism centred around the middle building, the restoration of the galleries surrounding the Grand Nave, the installation of a climate control system, the creation of a logistics centre, bringing the entire building up to code, and opening the large bay windows and passageways in order to restore the building’s original coherence and sense of transparency. These interventions represent a unique opportunity to re-discover the traces and ways in which the Grand Palais has withstood the test of time, survived changes in its function, to assert architecture as a point of departure, and the space as nurturing life and society.
Even though the initial reason for building the Grand Palais was to provide a site for presenting and promoting French artistic culture during the World’s Fair of 1900, the plan nevertheless envisioned durability and flexibility from the outset. Even though these many adaptations progressively complicated and depreciated certain parts of the Grand Palais, the intelligence of its general form and its original spatial intent have helped it survive these episodes and change with the times.
Our credo for the New Grand Palais is to complete and strengthen its formal logic through interventions that return a sense of modernity to its whole, all the while respecting its traditional identity.
The Jean Perrin Square and the ‘Jardin de la Reine’
The logical consequence of revamping the northern and southern access points, one of the challenges of the project, is that the middle building lies at the heart of our intervention. Our wish is to reinforce the sense of unity between the Grand Palais and the Palais d’Antin and to make the middle building the meeting point between the two. This approach respects the architects’ original intentions, namely to render the spaces and their development highly legible to users, such that they implicitly signify the building’s function.
The pure geometry of the rediscovered circle creates a new symbol and marker at the urban level for the entrance to the New Grand Palais. It will become a veritable place of its own that can host planned or spontaneous activities. Two ramps, designed on the basis of the geometric matrix provided by the steps and the fountain, will lead visitors from the level of the square at the base of the building towards the entrance. Facing the Seine there will be the entrance for specific audience and the independent access to the restaurant. The latter takes advantage of a large terrace orientated to the south, located below the Jardin de la Reine.
The middle building: ‘La Grande Rue des Palais’
By creating a progressive transition from the urban space to that of the galleries, the first two floors of the middle building contain the ambulatory. It is a majestic, open volume with multiple levels that will allow the public to embrace the Grand Nave and the rotunda of the Palais d’Antin at the same time. In fact, it emphasizes the original east-west axis of the composition. Situated along the lower main level, ‘La Grande Rue des Palais’ organizes the different entrance phases in a clear sequence before leading the public to the various activities offered. The ambulatory will become the connecting platform for all exhibitions at the new Grand Palais. The materials chosen for la Grande Rue des Palais will link the exterior to the interior, the existing to the new. The dichotomy between the building’s foundation wall and the piano nobile, perceptible on the outside because of the change in stone colour, will continue inside the building.
The exhibition spaces
The restructuring of the National Galleries seeks to take into account the interdependence between comprehending a work and its formal and conceptual presentation. This becomes a unique opportunity to develop a vast range of diverse “situations” in terms of volumes, light, materials, and their relationship to the outside. It’s not simply a question of making the volumes flexible, but of giving them the ability to become an event in and of themselves. This process is not confined to the galleries; it can happen anywhere in the building, wherever the structure allows for it. By integrating innovative museographic concepts into the institution, the museum will be able to host works that, until now, have only been seen in alternative spaces for brief periods of time, and which have in fact not been commented on or valued enough.
The Grand Palais des Arts et des Sciences
The Palais de la Découverte will expose the public to other forms of culture, such as exhibitions, contemporary art, or high-quality live performances. Conversely, the public visiting the Grand Nave and the galleries will be exposed to new experiences upon visiting the Palais de la Découverte. The new temporary gallery in the Palais de la Découverte has been conceived with this in mind, as its central location concretises the link between these two realities.
The logistics platform and bringing up to code
For this project to become an effective way to hosting very diverse events and publics, it first of all demands a clear, flexible, and adaptable structuring of the spaces at hand. More than simply managing current needs, our proposal opens the door to the future evolutions of these needs. What is at stake is formulating a vision that in the long term can accept new parameters, evolutions in technology, and paradigm shifts.
The program led us to create an underground level, which will host the logistics spaces and the associated parking and loading spaces. These technical works will permit an increase in visitor capacity to the Grand Palais. The Grand Nave will thus be able to accommodate more than 11,000 persons compared to the current 5,200, and this will increase its total visitor capacity from the current 16,500 to more than 21,900 persons.
From the Grand Palais to the city – the flow of tourists and the observatory
The movement of visitors within the Grand Palais represents an opportunity for “showing off” the architecture. By drawing the visitor’s attention, these views will frame “details” in the architecture and the landscape, thereby giving them emphasis. These views reveal themselves progressively as one walks through the space. They disclose the connection of the spaces that allow visitors to locate themselves within the building and in relation to the city. The internal tourist itinerary continues outside, along the rooftop of the Grand Palais, allowing visitors to discover the roof, and it will provide them with unobstructed, totally new vistas of Paris.
The monument to the dawn of sustainable development
We made use of a philosophy based on five main design values: Effectiveness, Sobriety, Strengthening Cultural Heritage, Minimal and Passive Intervention, and Remaining at the Service of Users. By analysing what is already there, the project is able to resolve and transform the challenges into strengths while at the same time identifying and preserving the quality of the inherited resources. Users (and future uses) have been placed at the heart of the design process by attempting to understand the many activities exercised and also by taking into account comfort and environmental requirements, be they climatic, acoustic, lighting-related, hygrothermic, and so forth. This intersection of situations, inherited resources, practices and activities, comfort and environmental requirements constitute the multi-faceted basis for this intervention. To reveal what is already there means to draw on the inherited resources to construct micro-contextual responses. One must in the end be hyper-contextual.
Project: restoration and redesign of the Grand-Palais des Champs-Élysées
Address: Avenue Winston Churchill, Paris 8e, France
Competitive dialogue: 2013-2014
Client: Réunion des Monuments Nationaux – Grand-Palais
Budget: €130 M. excl. VAT
Surface: 70 623 m²
Team: LAN (mandatory architect), Franck Boutté Consultants (sustainable design), Terrell (structure, façades, fluids), Michel Forgue (Quantity surveyor), Systematica (flux), Lamoureux (acoustic), Casso (Fire protection and accessibility engineers), CICAD (SCMC), BASE (landscaper), Mathieu Lehanneur (design).
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Focus sur Raphaël Année un jeune artiste, qui pratique la photographie et la conception graphique. Il a construit ce beau portfolio avec des photos de style et de jeunes parisiens. Des sujets intéressants dans des environnements divers traités principalement à la lumière naturelle.
These paper headdresses have been folded into the shapes of creatures from Chinese mythology by Paris accessories designer Qi Hu for the city’s Printemps department store.
Qi Hu created the spiky pieces for a display in Printemps using origami, a technique she developed growing up in China.
“Origami is our childhood game, it has affected me since I was little,” Hu told Dezeen. “I always use it as one of my main methods for my works, trying to tell Occident stories in an Oriental way.”
The designer explained that she was approached by the store’s visual merchandising department to create origami decorations for a display.
“I came up with the mask idea because it does not influence the clothing,” Hu explained.
“While they told me that they would put the decoration at the entry of the men’s section, I thought about guardians and some ancient creatures’ figures in front of Chinese traditional gates.”
Hu took the forms of revered Chinese creatures such as lions, dragons and kylins – a mix of a dragon, horse, ox and wolf – as the base shapes for the headgear.
The paper is folded into pointy shapes that resemble horns, tusks, teeth and ears.
The pieces are displayed on mannequins in the menswear department of Printemps and the designer describes them as being “full of masculine power”.
Although each piece in the collection is different, Hu reused some of the same techniques across all of the designs to speed up the folding process.
“I decided to modularise my design and I reuse and combine different elements,” said Hu. “Every mask has something in common but is truly unique.”
The headdresses are on show in the store until 18 March.
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Paris studio Atelier Zündel Cristea has added a glass-walled extension that projects from the rear of this hundred-year-old house in the Vincennes suburb (+ slideshow).
Atelier Zündel Cristea was asked to reorder and optimise the interior of the early-twentieth-century property and began the renovation by removing existing annexes and interior walls that were reducing the usable living space.
“The distribution of spaces was very awkward, and any rapport between the house and the garden was nonexistent,” said the architects, who claimed that the original layout had restricted the potential 120 square metres of useable floor space to just 90 square metres.
Adding the extension and opening up new spaces including the attic and basement increased the home’s total occupied area to 220 square metres.
Annexed rooms at the rear of the house were replaced with the glass-walled addition that projects out towards the garden and incorporates full-height doors that can be slid open to connect the open-plan living area with the outdoors.
A roof terrace on top of the new extension can be accessed through doors from the master bedroom and incorporates two skylights that provide additional daylight to the dining room and kitchen.
The en suite bathroom of the master bedroom also opens onto the roof terrace so the occupants can look out at the garden from the bathtub.
A corridor leads from the front door past the living room and staircase to the dining area, with its glazed doors providing views of the trees in the garden from the entry.
A staircase connecting the entrance corridor on the ground floor with bedrooms on the first and second floors features curving walls and banisters, and is naturally lit by dormer windows at the top of the house.
The wood-panelled living area at the front of the house features a corner sofa and a fireplace built into the fitted cabinetry that continues along one wall into the kitchen.
Stairs leading from the living area to the garden continue down to a basement that houses an office with a window squeezed in under the extension.
A geothermal heat pump was installed in the basement at the front of the house to extract warmth from the ground for heating, while a double air flow ventilation system helps control air circulation and provides additional energy savings.
The house’s dilapidated front facade was updated and painted white, with additions including a second dormer window, new ironwork on the windows and a canopy above the door completing the new look.
Photography is by Sergio Grazia.
Here’s a project description from the architects:
MAISON A VINCENNES
The object of our renovation work is a house located in Vincennes, within the radius which surrounds the Château de Vincennes, a radius monitored by architects of historical monuments.
The building seems to have remained largely in its original state since the beginning of the 20th century, and has not been renovated at all for at least thirty years. The distribution of spaces was very awkward, and any rapport between the house and the garden was nonexistent. In regards to an energy plan there was no insulation (neither within the walls nor within the attic spaces), and only single, non-waterproofed windows. The means of heating the house being individual gas burners. Almost a caricature.
In brief, the project consisted of:
– the demolition of annexes damaged beyond repair
– the completion in their place of an RDC extension around the preserved area of the house, which will open entirely upon the garden by means of a large bay window
– the general overhaul of the house with restoration of the cellar and attic spaces
If the successful execution of a high-efficiency project, one that sought low emission levels, was in clear evidence of being pursued, we never forgot the primary aim of an architect that is to conceive of a beautiful structure with quality spaces in which people feel good. There is also the fact that a project seeking high-efficiency is not something readily apparent, that all the elements contributing to such efficiency are almost invisible, yet remain perceptible.
According to set buying and selling property regulations the house originally consisted of an inhabitable 120m², but in fact only 90m² were liveable. After the completion of work, thanks to attic spaces, a semi-recessed basement, and an extension, there will be approximately 220m² in which to live.
The heating is geothermal, with the installation of a heat pump. Interior comfort is ensured by double air flow ventilation. On the roof we envisioned solar panels as a means to produce clean, hot water.
Built: 2010
Client: private
Architects: AZC
Consultants: Choulet
Construction cost: 0.3 M€ (ex VAT)
Gross area: 220 m²
Mission: Conception + construction
Project: House
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features glass-walled extension appeared first on Dezeen.
Designer Konstantin Grcic has produced a collection of furniture that combines industrial sheet glass with pistons, hinges and cranks for his latest exhibition at Galerie Kreo in Paris (+ slideshow).
Grcic collaborated with a traditional glass workshop in Frankfurt, Germany, to produce the collection comprising a chair, tables, chests, shelving and a vertical cabinet from the same float glass commonly used in architectural projects.
“Glass is not an obvious material for making furniture but it is a very intriguing material,” Grcic told Dezeen. “It is an industrial material, which is an aspect that I like about it.”
The transparency of the glass contrasts with fittings made from the black silicone typically used to minimise damage to glass surfaces, and the furniture also employs industrial gas pistons to introduce movement and an element of interactivity.
“These gas pistons – which are another industrially pre-fabricated product – create movement in a very magical, soft way,” said Grcic. “I think it adds another quality to the furniture that makes it more human.”
In the example of the chair, the pistons are linked to a lever that can be used to alter the position of the backrest, while round tables incorporate a piston that makes it easy to fold the top down.
A large table has four telescopic pistons attached to a crank that adjusts the height of the surface, simple boxes feature lids that close smoothly without any danger of breakage, and a book shelf incorporates wooden blocks that can be slid sideways like sprung bookends.
“Because the gas piston makes the movement so precise and controlled, it gives a lot of confidence,” Grcic pointed out. “These pistons are industrial products but each one is customised, so we specify exactly what it is used for. It is very beautiful – almost scientific – how they accurately adjust the piston to just be what we need, with a very soft, almost automatic movement.”
Grcic said he believes that there is a stigma that affects people’s relationship with glass furniture: “As well as the perception that glass is cold, there is a psychological belief that maybe it is fragile and could break and hurt you. [With these pieces] I am forcing you to interact, to touch it and interact with it and to overcome this psychological barrier.”
The exhibition’s title, Man Machine, is borrowed from an album by German electronic band Kraftwerk, and Grcic claimed it was chosen to represent the meeting of “the human heart and the machine, the mechanical precision, the cogs, the cold industrial aesthetic with something that is softer, more poetic, more emotional.”
The designer, who is renowned for his industrially manufactured products for brands including Vitra, Magis and Emeco, said that projects such as this one and a previous collection of painted aluminium furniture he designed for Galerie Kreo offer an opportunity to experiment with ideas that might eventually filter into his commercial work.
“I think in design it is not necessary that we push these boundaries all the time but sometimes it is really good and the gallery provides the freedom to experiment and to try things,” the designer claimed.
“My work for galleries is very much informed by my thinking as an industrial designer,” he added. “The gallery is a laboratory for ideas that I would eventually love to see being developed on an industrial scale. Only by creating them do you understand their potential, how they work and how they could be developed further on an industrial scale.”
The exhibition continues until 17 May 2014.
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with moving parts for Galerie Kreo show appeared first on Dezeen.
News: a swimming pool, a theatre and a restaurant are among designs by French studios Oxo Architectes and Laisné Associés to renovate abandoned Metro stations in Paris (+ slideshow).
Manal Rachdi of Oxo Architects and and Nicolas Laisné of Laisné Associés were commissioned by Paris mayoral candidate Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet to develop possibilities for renovating the disused spaces into places where Parisians can go to eat, dance, watch a play or even exercise.
“Why can’t Paris take advantage of its underground potential and invent new functions for these abandoned places?” Rachdi asked. “Far from their original purpose, more than a century after the opening of Paris’ underground network, these places could show they’re still able to offer new urban experiments”
These designs illustrate how Arsenal station, a disused stop near the Bastille that was closed in 1939 at the start of the Second World War and never reopened, could potentially be transformed into a swimming pool, theatre and concert hall, nightclub, art gallery or even refectory-style restaurant.
“To swim in the metro seems like a crazy dream, but it could soon come true,” said Rachdi. “Turning a former Metro station into a swimming-pool or a gymnasium could be a way to compensate for the lack of sports and leisure facilities in some areas.”
Another solution included an underground park, which would require a series of skylights to be built into the station’s roof to provide natural light.
The plans have been criticised for their huge cost and the safety issues involved in converting stations that still have live electricity running through them. Jean-Michel Leblanc, of France’s state-owned public transportation operator RATP told Le Parisien that it would be extremely difficult to make these stations safe for public use.
If Kosciusko-Morizet wins the election on March 30 this year, she plans on crowdsourcing other ideas for repurposing Paris’s abandoned stations.
There are 16 disused Metro stations in Paris, most of which closed between 1930-1970. A small number were also built but never opened. Previously the stations have been used as temporary sets for advertising campaigns and films. Porte-des-Lilas, a disused station closed in 1935, was used as a backdrop in 2001 film Amélie.
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into swimming pools and galleries unveiled appeared first on Dezeen.
Recently opened at Paris’ The Carpenters Workshop Gallery, photographer-turned-designer Stuart Haygarth’s “Play” showcases fascinating pieces of furniture, from lighting to tables. Upon first blush, the British designer’s sculptural works appear as…
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British designer Tom Dixon‘s interior for Paris restaurant Éclectic combines raw, industrial concrete surfaces with tactile brass, marble and leather details.
Commissioned by restaurateurs Fabienne and Philippe Amzalak, the restaurant is the first flagship interior in France to be completed by Dixon‘s interior design office, Design Research Studio.
Located in the Beaugrenelle Centre – a redevelopment of a monolithic concrete shopping mall originally opened in 1978 – the 160-cover brasserie features materials and motifs intended as an homage to 1970s brutalist architecture.
“Tom Dixon began with the idea of making the restaurant an integral part of its modernist surroundings,” explained a statement from Éclectic. “The technical areas of the building are exposed for maximum space, and concrete – the superstar of brutalism – is exploited in every possible texture.”
Concrete floors are left raw in places and waxed in others, while structural columns and ceiling beams are left exposed and the material is juxtaposed with warm brass panels on the walls.
The angular forms popularised by exponents of Brutalist architecture influenced the recurring use of geometric shapes, which appear in the hexagonal wall panels, the sharp edges of the panels surrounding the circular booths, and a faceted plinth at the entrance.
Fitted furniture creates different environments throughout the space, while brass table tops and benches upholstered in fabric and leather give the seating areas a warm and tactile feel.
A long curving bench provides seating with a view of the river Seine through full-height windows.
The interior features several examples of Dixon’s furniture and lighting, including a huge central chandelier made from 124 of his Cell lights.
Pieces including high tables with inverted conical tops, rounded sinks in the bathrooms that resemble Dixon’s Void lamps, and the angular podium at the entrance provide a sculptural presence.
As well as the Cell chandelier, smaller clusters of the lamps illuminate tables, while Dixon’s Etch lights, Base lamp and Lustre pendants also feature.
Photography is by Thomas Duval.
The following information is from Éclectic:
Tom Dixon’s Éclectic opens in the Beaugrenelle Centre, Paris
After relooking Le Bon and launching Ma Cocotte, Fabienne and Philippe Amzalak open Éclectic restaurant this January in the magnetically attractive surroundings of the Beaugrenelle Centre in the 15th arrondissement of Paris. For this address within an address, the couple entrusted the design brief to UK designer Tom Dixon’s Design Research Studio: its first flagship interior in France. The menu offerings give a contemporary twist to brasserie classics in this new 160-cover eatery.
A happy marriage between Parisian chic and British eccentricity, a free-form tribute to 1970s architecture and a new take on the traditional brasserie format to create a more private and more comfortable experience. The clue to the identity of Eclectic is right there in the name: a concept that mixes influences on the menu and in the restaurant.
70’S First
Tom Dixon began with the idea of making the restaurant an integral part of its modernist surroundings. The technical areas of the building are exposed for maximum space, and concrete – the superstar of brutalism – is exploited in every possible texture.
On the walls, it alternates with a backdrop of golden brass. On the floors, it is sometimes unfinished, sometimes waxed, and interspersed with areas of thick carpet to offset its potentially cold appearance.
Hexagons are used as a recurring theme, recalling the geometric and modular concepts of the 1970s. This theme is clear in the spaces formed by the interlocking central bench seats, the brass detailing that frames the view to the kitchen, and again in the design of the 124 metal lampshades of the chandelier, which presides over the dining room as the central pivot of its decorative style.
English Twists
Lighting is central to Tom Dixon’s design scheme, which showcases his talent for creative mood making. An orchestra of different lamps provides controlled lighting designed to reflect effectively from superb surfaces of wood, metal, stone and paint, and enhance the colours used for fabrics and leathers.
This scheme creates an interior where the influence of the architectural environment is balanced against the magnetic appeal of the department stores.
The bespoke furniture is sculptural, even jewel-like in places. It structures the dining room around key elements that include the imposing coloured leather bench seats, the central alcoves and a succession of small open lounges along the wall overlooking the River Seine.
The result is a hyperquality mix-and-match that is elegantly welcoming and makes the 300 m2 dining room an intimate and friendly space.
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French office Périphériques has redeveloped a site in west Paris by adding apartment blocks with contrasting facades and angular balconies, as well as a nursery with stripy pink and green walls (+ slideshow).
Périphériques designed three buildings for the irregularly shaped plot between Fremicourt Street and Boulevard de Grenelle, accommodating 35 apartments for rent, 54 social housing units and a kindergarten for up to 30 children.
The nine-storey apartment block is positioned on the northern side of the site, facing out onto Boulevard de Grenelle, and its facade is clad with terracotta panels that have been enamelled to create an iridescent effect.
The south-facing rear of the building overlooks a large communal garden, so the architects added a series of protruding balconies that extend the living rooms of each residence. Contrastingly, this elevation is clad with timber slats.
The social housing block is positioned opposite, facing south onto Frémicourt Street. The facade of this building is glazed, while its rear wall is clad with anodised aluminium.
“The program’s particularity is that the same operation unites social housing as well as private housing units,” said the architects. “Thus, we have treated the facades in a common way but with some classification.”
The three-storey kindergarten is sandwiched between the two housing blocks but can be accessed via a passageway that runs along the edge of the plot.
This structure has a multicoloured facade comprising terracotta blocks enamelled in various shades of pink, green, yellow, red and white. Some of these block also function as louvres for the windows.
The main spaces of the nursery are located on the two lowest levels of the building, while staff rooms occupy the uppermost floor.
Photography is by Sergio Grazia.
Here’s more information from Périphériques:
Grenelle Frémicourt
Grenelle, 35 Private Housing, and Fremicourt, Immeuble de 54 Logements
The plot allotted to the project is situated between Fremicourt Street and Boulevard de Grenelle. It is exceptional by its orientation and its centre which is in continuity with the neighbouring gardens. In order to achieve a Low Energy Consumption Building in Paris, it is fundamental to recon on important technical plans of action.
The position of the building’s body on the boulevard (nine levels high) and on the street (ten levels high) is planned in a way to allow housing units with a double exposition. Their south end is extended by loggia spaces with pleasant views. Beyond the general implantation question, the proposed working drawing of the building is adapted to the context’s constrains.
The facades are creased in order to exploit at best its exposition and to mark the opening to the surrounding free spaces. The program’s particularity is that the same operation unites social housing as well as private housing units. Thus, we have imagined to treat the facades in a common way but with some classification.
The four facades, isolated on the interior, have been enveloped in an openwork horizontal sheathing elements – using glass for the Fremicourt side, anodised aluminium and wood for the garden side, and finally enamelled terracotta for the Boulevard de Grenelle side.
Nursery, 30 Cribs
The nursery capacity is 30 cribs. It develops as a 3-level superstructure with the first two floors accessible to the public. The ground floor houses the reception and premises for cradles, first floor houses premises for tall children then the second floor houses staff quarters.
The building is located in the inner courtyard of the passage along the west side of the operation. The volume respects the template imposed on street along the way. Inside the inner courtyard, the front of the nursery has inflection points in order to meet the size constraints imposed by the major sights in the lower levels of the building of social housing vis-à-vis.
The facades and garden will pass mechanical protection made with terracotta elements enamelled colour. This mineral cladding partially returns the roof. In front of windows, sunshades also in terracotta elements provide sun protection.
The outdoor areas are planted and bordered by a fence lined with a hedge shrub. A playground occasionally covered with a canopy containing the same elements as facade is provided along the building.
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apartment blocks and a colourful kindergarten appeared first on Dezeen.
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