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Architects: Carriere Didier Gazeau
- Area: 525 m²
- Year: 2024
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Photographs:Olivier Knepper
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Manufacturers: Carriere Didier Gazeau
Text description provided by the architects. Located in Saint-Ouen in the northern suburbs of Paris, the site of the Isae-Supmeca Engineering School saw its spatial organization significantly impacted as part of the urban redevelopment project for the Olympic and Paralympic Games. This involved cutting a street through the campus to create the road network for the new Athletes' Village district. The project aims to reconnect the two parts of the school and restore its functional continuity by creating a new link between the two buildings, passing under the new road.
To the south, the link leads into the historic Isae-Supmeca building, the former premises of the Ecole Nationale Professionnelle de Commerce et d'Industrie de Saint-Ouen. This classically designed 19th-century building is characterized by its symmetrical composition, regular construction, and ordered facades. To the north, the link connects with the school extension (housing the school's auditorium) built in 2009 in a resolutely contemporary style. From an urban point of view, the new gallery is intended to bridge the gap between Saint-Ouen's historic past and the urban renewal associated with the creation of the Athletes' Village.
As a central element of the project, the underground link, passing under the historic building and the street, must be more than a simple functional link. Its extremities are materialized on the surface by two canopies, one newly created in the historic courtyard, the other redesigned in front of the auditorium. Going beyond its function as a link, it becomes a new space appropriated by campus users. A link and a place for the school. On the historic side, the new canopy is positioned in the right center of the courtyard, acting as a signpost. It houses the spiral staircase that descends in a fluid movement to the gallery. Like an abstract disc floating in the historic courtyard, the new canopy provides a shelter for the school. On the other side of the crossing, the gallery emerges in a simpler geometry, with a set of staircases developing in continuity with the contemporary architecture of the auditorium.
Necessarily made of reinforced concrete, the structure's infrastructure is coated with a red stain that recalls the ornamental brickwork of the historic building, while revealing the material's appearance. The materiality of the shotcrete, left untreated, reveals the construction process of this infrastructural work. The treatment of the interior floors, staircases, and gallery follows the same logic, with the use of red porphyry aggregates providing visual continuity with the stained concrete walls.
Both an infrastructure and a new architectural space for the campus, the project required the mobilization of ambitious constructive and structural procedures to preserve the existing buildings and their activities during the works. Entirely carried out on an occupied site with functional continuity, the construction of the reconnection gallery at the Isae-Supmeca School raised major operational issues. A real technical and organizational challenge, it was necessary to partially excavate the school's two courtyards and then dig the gallery under the historic building, while ensuring the structural stability of the two existing buildings.
