Pian Medoc Junior High School / BPM Architectes

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This situation contributed to shaping both the volumes of the buildings and the materiality of the junior high school and its equipment. The location of the buildings is thought out according to the vegetation and not the other way around. The constructions adapt to the site with the desire to create a learning space linked to nature. The project is designed around two structured North-South axes, creating visual breakthroughs and transparencies. The junior high school thus opens up completely to its environment and the architecture allows nature to penetrate into its heart of it.The project consists of 4 entities whose volumetry is based on two architectural typologies: a light concrete base and a wooden construction, mainly in maritime pine, a local species. The base is relatively closed, it creates an enclosure on the ground floor around the protected playground. The entire project revolves around this outdoor space, which thus becomes a place of life contributing to conviviality and exchange. Its layout creates various spaces materialized by mineral and vegetal areas, play and expression spots, and calm and relaxation locations. The project complies with environmental regulations at an E3C2 level of the E+C- Label with a reuse issue: 80% of the woodcut on the plot was used in the construction.The architectural approach is based on a poetic reading of nature and the forest materialized by the use of wood on the facade and the integration of a vertical frame marked by wooden posts spaced 1.3 meters apart or in hollow joints. Finely chiseling the buildings, these spines, as they gain height, unfold in the overhangs of the roof.Located in the town of Pian-Médoc, the 3.2-hectare plot on which the junior high school is located is heavily wooded, bordered to the north by a pine forest and to the south by a busy road; on the west side are houses and on the east a plot, recently deforested, and constructible. The project retains a wooded area left in its natural state within the 75 m setback zone along the road. This wooded fringe creates a filter between a passing road and the junior high school designed as a setting in the middle of the forest. The layout of the roads was guided by the constraint of local urban planning while sparing the preserved wooded border as much as possible.Text description provided by the architects.Creating a school space is above all placing use at the heart of reflections. It is about revealing the site, giving it meaning, imagining spaces that support students in their learning and in their relationship with others, and designing a benevolent, inspiring, and inclusive workplace. The construction of a school is an opportunity to see architecture participate in the transmission of knowledge.