This week, we conclude our September “Learning and Education” theme. Our reporting this month has shown that the challenges in designing learning spaces are many, and we don’t have all the answers.
We do, however have evidence of exceptional design happening right now in many places all around the world – from firms intent on solving education design pain points, but also on creating learning spaces that are beautiful, that serve many purposes for the communities that take ownership of them, and that drive the learning process to be more inclusive, more collaborative, more imaginative, and more joy-filled.
Two final projects speak to these concepts.
First, the University of Law – Paris I. Completed in June 2019 by ChartierDalix, the project called for the modernization of the Lourcine Barracks located in Paris’ 13th district. The new facilities include a 500-seat lecture theater, 27 teaching rooms, a 6,562 square foot library, 4,921 square feet of offices, two service apartments, and a outdoor central square – all installed within the old parade ground and accompanying military buildings originally erected in 1875.
The second, in a beachside residential area of Tel Aviv, is the new TEO Center for Culture, Art and Content. Designed by Tel Aviv-based A. Lerman Architects and completed in September 2019, The TEO Center serves as a cultural teaching and gathering space for residents in the surrounding neighborhoods with creative pursuits. In each firm’s own words, the stories…
University of Law-Paris I, Modernisation of the Lourcine Barracks, Paris (13ᵉ) // Paris, France. Designed by ChartierDalix.
“Building a city on a city” has long been the standard approach to urban renewal. Our modernity has largely ignored and further complicated this practice that is now coming back all the more strongly due to the economic realities of construction being challenged by the severity of environmental issues.
Rehabilitating and preserving existing buildings, even over and above considerations of heritage, is becoming a viable means of saving energy and sobriety, a source of reusable materials and a great opportunity to discover new uses resulting from conversion. Entering a building with its past life and its history, its previous uses, means imagining new stories to tell based on older tales and the richness of their promise.
That is why we like to use the term “Metamorphosis” rather than rehabilitation: for us, it means building on the old to create something new and richer still than what might have been preserved.
The project to transform the Lourcine barracks in the 13th Arrondissement of Paris is ambitious and innovative, due to both its scale and above all to the new relationship it creates with the existing buildings. In the heart of a very built-up and innervated district where the barracks has hitherto formed a distinct area, opening up the site to its immediate environment helps to tell those new stories. This evolution is based on an approach to the redevelopment of Parisian heritage, which in this case is envisaged not so much as a museum exhibit frozen in time, but as a means of regenerating the city, capable of breathing new life into the district.
>>A military site at the center of urban planning in Paris in the twentieth century
While this had been a military site since well before the French revolution, it has been in its current configuration since the end of the nineteenth century. The topography of the land in the Lourcine barracks presents a flat area between the parade ground and Boulevard de Port Royal and a slight slope towards Rue de la Glacière, but on the eastern side Rue Broca (an ancient medieval lane) is almost five metres lower.
This allows for natural light to enter the basement floors of building 2 through large windows with a major foundation. This topography bears witness to the major earthworks and development undertaken in the nineteenth century.
In the centre, a large, rectangular parade ground planted with trees and surrounded on both sides by substantial barracks (buildings 1 and 2), each consisting of a central portion with wings at either end. These two original buildings were doubtless built in two phases using dressed stones, rubble and brick with a wooden frame and a slate roof according to a classical architectural model.
The site evolved in the second half of the twentieth century with the demolition of buildings facing Boulevard de Port Royal and Rue Saint Hippolyte and the construction of two imposing buildings maintaining the composition of the north / south axis. On the Saint Hippolyte side, a two-floor car park was created under the building up to the level of the slope and protruding into the parade ground.
>>A university teaching and research programme on a military site
The redevelopment plans include the installation of a part of the Law Faculty of the Université Paris 1 (teaching and research facilities, a library and central copying room) in buildings 1 and 2, and in part of the basements under building 3.
The challenge for the project is to preserve a precious heritage that bears witness to the urban history of this district while altering it as little as possible. The idea is to change the organization of the barracks buildings to perfectly suit their new intended functions.
>Two major choices lead to a project making a connection via the garden level that reveals the topography of the site.
Showcase this precious heritage by minor interventions on buildings 1 and 2: the quality of the construction and their capacity already make them a wonderful place to house the research and teaching programme. Structural adaptations for insulation, access and safety are all possible and can even be further reduced if the project is carefully adapted to the existing spaces (conservation of the staircases, for example).
Work on these buildings is carefully targeted and limited to the interior; the envelope remains almost untouched apart from altering the size of the doors leading to the outside to comply with modern standards but within the existing clearance. The works have been planned to ensure that the rough finishing leaves the existing structure and the nobility of the original materials visible.
The internal façades are revealed by generous walkways, while the height is emphasized by shafts that show off the existing volumes.
Re-establishing the strategic function of the central square: the co-existence of different uses, namely the proximity between the future premises of Paris 1, the military accommodation and the rooms for students taking preparatory classes make the square something of a challenge:
…a place where flows both converge and separate, it must make it possible to preserve the overall sense of the site while avoiding any undesirable confrontations between users.
The square must not therefore be “built”, but rather restored: that is why the placement of the reception area represents a particularly sensitive feature of the project.
While giving the site its overall sense and cohesiveness, the location of the reception area calls out, offers guidance and plays the part of an attractive, functional and pleasant space. This reorganization makes it possible to add value to the centre in terms of both landscaping and functionality.
Envisaged as an interior geography, it links together different topographic levels through folds in the ground or gentle dips with minimum interference.
Furthermore, the symmetrical layout of the whole enables a visual link to be envisaged that runs right through the plot revealing the depth of the whole area from Rue Saint Hippolyte to Boulevard de Port Royal.
The proximity of buildings 1 and 2 to the basement of building 3 makes it possible to create a link connecting the 3 units without affecting the landscape. With this reception hub it is possible to access both the teaching areas and the library and research areas. We wanted to make this “distribution platform” the living heart of the site.
The programme installed on the lower level of the esplanade, which leads you down naturally, constitutes the heart of the Lourcine site. It is this central point that provides access to the library, located in building 1, via a direct link that crosses the sunken entrance and also provides access to the upper floors.
On the other side, it is from the same central point and by following the amphitheatre, that the students can access the magnificent classrooms on Rue Broca, and all the teaching facilities located on the upper floors of building 2.
>Materials and interior design choices
The qualities of the existing site are magnified by the complete freeing up of the spaces: the simple application of flocking on the underside of the arches (acoustics and fire prevention), as well as the complete absence of false ceilings, thus revealing the technical installations, helps to maintain the existing volumes.
A certain “brutalism”, linked to the visibility of all the utility networks, contrasts with the fine details of the made-to-measure furniture and the nobility of the raw materials (steel, solid oak, floorboards).
For the interior design of the reading rooms in the library, we have chosen to position the aisles along the façades to allow the light to freely enter the building and thus free up the view of the succession of windows.
A monumental winding staircase marks the entrance to the library at both the garden level and the ground floor up to the first floor. Its size makes it a remarkable architectural feature and reveals the volume of the building and the height of a whole section.
The eastern end of the connecting gallery of the Lourcine site leads to a section that opens onto the Rue Broca. The reception level thus provides a direct link with the outside and the street at garden level.
In the upper floors, a wide and generous walkway filled with natural light provides the opportunity to create a meeting place over several floors: each floor is thus linked by the main, open staircase that provides direct access to the classrooms without taking the closed staircases.
The garden level gallery, linked to these walkways, transforms them into places to share and exchange in which a number of alcoves have been built for working: building 2 thus becomes a sort of “learning centre” perfectly adapted to new ways of learning and teaching.
>>On the exterior
The 500-seat amphitheatre, a major feature of the Lourcine campus, is installed at the lowest point of the parade ground where the old car park was and along the north / south axis of the site. It is accessed through a gallery entirely covered with self-weathering steel that provides a continuity with the central esplanade.
The self-weathering steel, a warm, vibrant and changing material, accompanies the visitor throughout all the outside public areas and extends right into the interior. It is a skin that shows the marks of time and embodies the new face of the Lourcine campus.
“There was great potential on this site for a garden, a place for the students to interact in convivial surroundings. It was also a unique opportunity to recreate a large tree-filled square in the heart of Paris to showcase the existing plane trees and add to them to offer a vast, well-planted and green esplanade.
The aim was thus to rediscover a landscape, to be able to tell its story, show it off in its best light and make it a high added value space that provides the transition between a place of work and a living area for students, between a built space and an open space.”
The view of the square at eye level makes it possible to clearly distinguish between the vertical elements and the existing plane trees. The crowns of the existing and future trees will be pruned at a high level in order to preserve and emphasize the perspectives and the continuity provided by the creation of a new, uniform ground cover.
The trees form a vertical pattern that is in many ways the very identity of the square. By considering the esplanade and the surroundings of the buildings and the fire brigade access as a single horizontal element of the landscape, and by creating a gentle and continuous slope, we sought to reinforce the status of the square as a unifying and not divisive force.
By blurring the edges at ground level, the whole of this horizontal landscape bleeds into a homogeneous horizon that does not interfere with the view of the tops of the plane trees and the existing buildings located around the square.
The Lourcine barracks, converted into a law faculty, is the fruit of a contemporary approach to the transformation of built heritage and new practices. Any built space fulfills a social function. We believe in the emergence of a shared space made possible by architecture.
TEO Center for Culture, Art and Content // Herzliya, Israel. Designed by A.Lerman Architects Ltd.
In a beachside residential area of Herzliya, TEO (the Theodor Herzl Center for culture, art, and content) comes into view as a distinct single-story building, eminently lower than the neighborhood’s enclosed private mansions. The freestanding TEO opens up a wide panorama toward the west – the horizon over the ocean – thus rupturing the visual and social narrative of walled luxury villas this area of Herzliya is known for. The insertion of a fully exposed public cultural center as an event in the surrounding urbanscape was key to the design strategy.
TEO provides a unique functional facility to the city’s art-practicing and culture-seeking residents. The plan is designed within a 164 by 164 square foot space around an offset central patio surrounded by the various programs: a music conservatory, a dance school, art and ceramics studios, a gallery, a senior recreation center, and a cafeteria. An upper partial floor houses a library complemented by a 985 square foot open deck.
The uniqueness of the design lies in the coherence of a precise geometric module that is strictly enforced throughout; Concrete (on-site casts & precast units), textured glass, and metal flow seamlessly from exterior to interior surfaces. Cutting-edge sealing techniques were used to protect the building from the rain while maintaining its flat roof silhouette and tight proportions.
The patio (958 square feet) makes available a space of quiet and welcoming scale. The floated, draining floor provides a pleasing horizontal surface from which a single mature oak tree rises. Direct sunlight from above dynamically projects its presence across the patio’s surfaces, creating ever-changing visual compositions of organic against geometrical form.
- Lerman Architects is situated in the south of Tel Aviv in a locksmith workshop turned into an architectural studio. The practice was established in 2006 by Asaf Lerman, an Architectural Association graduate. Their portfolio consists entirely of public projects & Asaf is a well-known spokesman for the civic rights in face of the rapidly privatized world everyone lives in.