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Architects: Paul Le Quernec
- Year: 2022
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Photographs:11h45
Text description provided by the architects. Before even looking at the project itself, most people ask me: “But how did you end up doing a project in India?” The truth is so unbelievable that I sometimes hesitate to tell it, not because I wish to embellish the story but to make it more believable. So here is the real story. In December 2015, the agency was going through a critical period. One day, the phone rang in the middle of a lunch break.
At the other end of the line, a very enthusiastic man, with a strong Indian accent, asked to speak with me about a daycare project in India. As I was unavailable, the call did not reach me. We considered the phone call as a hoax and then forgot about it. Fortunately, the man called again the day after. We agreed to meet for the first time on January 1st, 2016, in Paris where we spent six hours together, talking about everything and nothing. Of course, we also talked about his project. Mr. Aditya's ambition was to build in India nurseries and kindergartens worthy of the best European standards, French ones in particular. That's why he went to meet a few architects of his choice until he settled on our agency.
On the 25th of January, I flew for the first time to India. Everything was still to be done, we had to start from scratch as even the terrain was not defined yet. This project was therefore an adventure in every sense of the word. I must admit that I arrived there with totally unfounded preconceptions that India would be more permissive in terms of urban and building regulations. I quickly discovered that France, which is already full of standards of all kinds, had nothing to envy India—we will come back to this later. The unique plan of the building, shaped like a rounded hammer, is a direct consequence of the local urbanistic constraints.
The project, concretely speaking, has been thought of as a mischievous contestation of its context. Located in Gurgaon, a new city adjacent to New Delhi, our project is both at the edge of an upscale residential area and bordering on wastelands. Although the building is about 15 meters high, it looks tall above the ground, yet it is tiny when compared to 30-story apartment buildings. The landscape is in itself a contrast between parched grasslands and overwhelming buildings. The concept was, therefore, to make the nursery the “urban child of the neighborhood”.
The ambition was to design a building that would positively disrupt the rigor of the towers, whose seriousness verges on boredom. The new building would be infinitely smaller, but we wanted it bold enough to animate the neighborhood like a child illuminates a home. Given the stunning monochromia of the surroundings, excessive use of color was more of a reflex than a temptation—in any case, it was evidence. And yet, we are the first to refute the association between children and bright colors. Here, the color is aimed at the neighborhood more than at the children, as shown by the interiors’ chromatic sobriety.
Our problem was to find a subtle use of colors that, precisely, are not. To this end, we combined two elements: grey, which is an equal association of three primary colors, and relief, which modifies the appearance depending on the point of view. This is how we developed a “pineapple-skinned” cladding consisting of small three-sided pyramids, organized so that the three primary colors—cyan, magenta, and yellow— alternate with the three secondary ones—orange, green, and violet.
The pyramids are arranged in a way that the complementary colors adjoin each other. Thus, from a physical point of view, the façade is a vibrant decomposition of grey. Its relief, however, emphasizes warm-colored or cool-colored facets, depending on the point of view. This is why the façade is never of the same color. Looking from the street, you will see it blue or orange; the view from the top floors of the neighboring buildings, however, displays a green or a yellow face. By day or by night, the building expresses the joy and life of the children who live inside.
