A small public facility
Conservatoire & House of associations

Public Facility

Student project

The studio “Un petit équipement” (A small public facility), overseen by Janine Galiano, Jérôme Habersetzer and Raphaël Fabbri, invites us to conceive a small public facility involving two programs: a conservatoire and a house of associations.

The plot on which the project is brought to life is located in the city of Pantin, in the immediate vicinity of the Ourq Canal, between “rue de l’ancien canal” and Jean Lolive avenue.

Between a peaceful canal and an animated, car-strewn avenue, this project is placed in an area filled with contrast. It is therefore built around two antithetical intentions: to link and to divide.

The building presents itself as a real meeting place. Both programs, ultimately intertwined, are built using a visual relationship game, which is reinforced by the access path that develops in the atrium. Indeed, two flights of stairs provide an intertwined and similar path, whilst, at the same time, guaranteeing impermeability between the two programs.

Each storey is defined by a particular register. The ground floor, built in concrete in continuity with the auditorium, creates an opaque underbody, hosting the administration desk and the auditorium. The latter, traversed by a cross-sectional volume lit by a closed light-well patio, creates a passage that connects the axes on both sides of the plot.

The raised ground floor, elevated from the “rue de l’Ancien Canal” level, keeps the avenue at a distance. It is host to the more public programs of the building, namely the exhibition hall, the cafeteria, the accessible patio, as well as multi-purpose activity rooms. Its steel structure allows one to obtain a see-through space, thereby creating a significant number of visual relationships and reflexions.

The two upper floors accommodate the private rooms, specific to each program. Their CLT structure is used to make the space impervious to sight as well as to limit the carbon footprint of the building.

The top floor features a glasshouse and an accessible rooftop, the shared gardens of which encourage the city dwellers to take ownerships of the building. Following an approach which is as social as it is environmental, this last program, in continuity with the others and attached to the house of associations is designed with the view of creating, in the scale of the building as well as in the scale of the city, by opening itself to it and providing a genuine place for all kinds of exchanges.

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