Sorts of space, Early childhood
Nursery school

Public Facility

Student project

The Espèce d’Espace, enfance de l’espace (Sort of space, space infancy) studio, overseen by Miguel Macian and Sebastian Ramseyer, invites us to create a nursery school, in Paris, on the university campus.

The workshop proposes a specific approach to space creation, as it starts by examining the characteristics of the interior space. This means that we will treat and manipulate the school space in its most humble layout, in order to highlight the possible virtues of these spaces in a qualitative approach, putting usage, construction, proportions and lighting on the same level.

We will therefore begin our research with the nursery school before looking at it on a larger scale, that of a coherent ensemble, responding to the solicitations of use and to the movements of the human body, on the adult and child scales, determined in its adjacencies and its distances.

The project involves an ecological, as well as sensory, approach with regard to the materials. The hall appears to be the main component of the school. It does indeed play the transitional role between the public place of the mineral city and the more private school-space, mostly made of rammed earth.

The cork, placed on the floor of the classrooms, allows to obtain a flexible floor covering for the children, easy to clean, rot-proof, and which participates in the renewal of the relationship with the natural materials. It provides a warm and healthy space, just like the rammed-earth walls. The hemp lime applied on some of them allows to brighten the room while keeping a natural aspect and materiality as well as the ecological aim. Some of the large spans are made of wood frame, like all the woodwork and furniture.

The project is inscribed in the quasi-totality of the offered parcel, which invites us to inhabit the square that it constitutes. It takes the form of a eight, hosting the interior spaces on the periphery while the courtyards are in the center, creating a centripetal whole.

The curves build the space differently; as they collide with other lines the entire feeling surrounding the environment is questioned. The lighting and the shades play a key role in the game of bends and curves.

The circle accounts for a different space, equidistant to all points, and allows for each individual to be equally included, which is why this building intertwines straight, frank and rigorous lines with soft, supple bends promoting inclusivity.

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