aavp architecture

School project Cristino Garcia. A school and a gymnasium implanted in the City of Saint Denis (93) near to the big ‘Stade de France’, a place where industry is dominant. We’ve worked with a wooden façade, massive wooden panelling where the ornamentation repeats the vernacular drawing of the industrial buildings made of bricks and steel. This drawing was applied on the wooden panelling and on the aluminium sheet which envelopes the existing metallic hall, resembling to an EIFFEL structure.

Between buildings heritage and social memory, the project aim lies in the re-interpretation of “the new” and “the existing” in an allegorical fusion. In fact, the richness of the ornamentation of our industrial buildings and the spaces resulting from them, are lost in our collective memory. We have tried to rehabilitate this icon, to enrich it with a contemporary value adapted to the existing construction. In fact, the project will be constructed in wood, both structurally and in its finishing, with a true attention and engagement towards nobility and durability of the materials. Each façade is decorated with a drawing, a motive evoking bricks and the line-work of steel structures. A “vernacular architecture” diverted in a free interpretation by applying wood like ‘marquetry’, pushing certain details to the extreme to obtain effects. It’s an erudite cutting of the constructive constraints and an implementation of the panelling placed in a rhombus-pattern, marked by a hollow. The windows open up the façade. The position of these windows is depending on the elements indicating the rhythm by a range of perforations, aiming to make our project a “precious and solid” wooden (jewellery) box.

THPE

competition – winner