PORTFOLIO

Maissa Architectures

Jean Pierre Maissa

M.Arch: Faculty of Architecture, Genoa, Italy

PhD: Urban Planning, Milan Polytechnic, Italy

Int’l. Assoc. AIA

Architect, planner, educated, and licensed in Italy since 1999, Jean Pierre Maissa has a history of successful projects ranging from Urban design and remodeling, university campuses, office buildings, leisure and hospitality, and housing. He has Interned and collaborated in Paris, Milan, Brussels, and Genoa.

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Ramses SQ CAIRO, Egypt 10

Decameron Hotel 16

Mouila University Campus 18

Mr. Maissa has championed an array of international collaboration in projects in France, Italy, Egypt, Gabon, and neighboring African countries. He thrives when complexity, out-of-box thinking within an extreme outreach for pragmatism, and urgent implementation, are at play. He possesses a detailed-oriented mindset and organizational skills that have led him- while settled in Africa (Gabon)- to piloting a small team of up to ten people, for over fifteen years, and posing it as a stemming point for larger international collaborations. From there he oversees the concept, the development, and the implementation of every project, each one within a unique and ever-changing contextual framework that somehow mirrors the often diluted architect/client relation or particular institutional settings of regulations or budgetary, timeframe, or building conditions. The project of the E3MG campus – a mining and metallurgy engineering school- in Moanda, Gabon, delivered in 2017, has been recognized internationally, as a finalist for the 2019 World Architectural Festival, with publications in Achdaily, Dom Publisher’s monography of Subsaharan African Architecture, and Dezeen.

Mr Maissa is an AIA International Associate Member, Queens, NY, Chapter.

Comilog Headquarters 28

NET Zero: French Embassy 30 +1 jean

CAMPUS: MINING ENGINEERING SCHOOL

MOANDA GABON

CLIENT: ERAMET COMILOG, FRANCE

COMPLETED 2017

WORLD ARCHITECTURE FESTIVAL FINALIST, AMSTERDAM, 2019

VIDEO PRESENTATION LINK: HTTPS://VIMEO.COM/462177817

The Ecole des Mines et de la Métallurgie de Moanda (E3MG), is backed by the Nancy University (France). Beyond educating specialized engineers, The E3MG will also be doing research, paving the way to help Gabon transitions its mining industry from a mere extraction of raw minerals towards a more performative transformation and manufacture of high valued metals.

The Campus spans across a thirty-hectare wide area, extracted from the forest and surrounded by mountains and mining valleys. The compound comprises thirteen buildings and facilities housing sixty students and a dozen personnel and teachers, such as student dormitories, staff, and teacher’s houses, a restaurant, a foyer, sports and recreative area, a power generator plant, clean water and fire water storage.

The whole master plan is dominated by the main building, which hosts both teaching and management activities—also, a library, an auditorium, practice laboratories, and a urgent medical care unit.

Due to this concentration of diverse functions, we have designed an H-shaped two-level building where two slightly parallel volumes relate to each other through a bridge-like light volume. The lower level is made of a concrete podium, which partly digs into the ground, wrapped with anodized aluminum sheets that protect the concrete from humidity and heat. Underground are located mechanical and IT rooms and a medical unit, accessible through an external slope ramp in the inward courtyard side and a vehicular one, from the exterior.

A 150-seat auditorium occupies the ground floor’s left-wing, on the entrance side, while the connecting and right wings host teaching-laboratories, workshops and storages.

The upper level, on the other hand, is structured by steel portals of I beams and angles supporting the wrapping around curtain wall façade and the metallic roof. The H configuration enable spatial distinct quarters supporting the heterogeneity of the programme, while positioning each quarter within reach one from one another. Spatial diversity and unity. Moreover, both circulations and standing units are constantly visually exposed to the surroundings, due to the continuous and transparent perimetral ribbon of sun-reducing glazing façade. Also, spaces can feel apart on their own, in isolation, when specific needs must be met, or getting reached out, as they are interrelated throughout a continuous physical promenade, along the H perimeters.

The concrete podium occupies most of the ground floor except the left-wing, in which the auditorium is enclosed in a recessed curtain wall, shaded by the overlapping first-floor slab. The lobby-as ninety percent of the building interior- is naturally illuminated, visually immersed to the surrounding nature as all the non-specialized rooms in the upper level. The rest of the ground-floor hosts teaching laboratories for Chemistry (Metallurgy) and Geosciences and workshops, for minerals studies.

The upper façade constitutes a continue glazed ribbon all along the H branches, allowing natural illumination and enabling “an immersive experience of endless views to the surrounding nature” from each room and within the corridors. The internal distribution takes place from the inward periphery of the H, stemming a long and contemplative promenade, totally exposed to nature and the light. The AGC Glass STOPSOL bronze laminated glass panels randomly alternated with acrylic paint stainless steel panels, create patterns that echo local cultures while helping the building envelope to blend to nature.

Its massiveness is, therefore, comes ethereal, ever changing, depending of the point of observation, the time of the day and the intensity of daylight at any given moment. Also, the mood of the of the reflexive patterns portrays different figures, function to daylight’s course. The STOPSOL glass has sun reducing properties and is layered, from the exterior side to the interior, with a 6 millimeters bronze glass panel, a 0.38-millimeter PVB membrane, another 6 millimeters clear glass panel and a 2 millimeters one, on the interior side.

Sun reducing properties are reinforced by the protruding mullions, those 450 millimeters extra external fins, whose noses allow further shading, acting like “brise-soleil.” Interiors partition walls are made from acoustic 13mm aluminum studded plasterboards, which would enable future adaptability.

Because rainfall rates in the region are among the highest globally, the roof geometry is thought of as a multifaceted set of umbrellas, with different heights and two low points coinciding with internals water pipes. Reducing rainwater collectors of the 1300sqm roof to only two points eases water harvesting for future usages such as watering and landscaping during the dry season.