08 - Saint-Rémi School

08 - Saint-Rémi School - A. Gamard, D. Lombard, E. Roux - 1972

16 Rue du Renard, Paris

The school was realized by three parisian architects, Alain Gamard, Daniel Lombard and Edouard-Marc Roux in 1972, at the same time as the neighboring construction site of the Centre Pompidou. The school is to replace the one formerly located on rue Saint-Merri destroyed to make way for the Beaubourg piazza.

Because of a planned underground car exit on the site, the architects imagined a building with a spectacular cantilever. The building is treated in raw concrete, in a brutalist spirit. The glazed facades - treated as curtain walls - are of great simplicity. The program includes an elementary school, a swimming pool and a gymnasium. The sports program is accessible by going downhill, the school program by going uphill via a system of ramps. These ramps cross all the other programs (swimming pool, gymnasium, restaurant, library) and leave the limits of the building to use the playgrounds, placed on superimposed terraces. The City of Paris wanted the educational program to be based on the open air school method. Thus, the floors are treated as open areas without partitions. Several classes therefore study in the same space; the activity can be fluctuating and the space mobile, open to appropriation and experimentation.

The school is a remarkable example of the architecture of The Glorious Thirties (1945-1975), yet unloved and little known. The silhouette and the curtain wall still offer a striking contrast with its post-Haussmannian mineral environment. The building is defined by the exceptional fluidity of its interior spaces. Only a visit of the interior allows to measure the unsuspected quality of the voluntary and totally internalized universe which is that of the equipment in its current state. The maintenance work carried out over the years has only altered the initial arrangements, the project managers were never consulted, the access sequence has been disfigured, and in its current state, the hall of Saint-Merri gives little hint of its past splendor.