Rehabilitation & extension of Courteline College

Working on a restricted site with a diverse heritage, we have deployed facilities in which economy of resources does not preclude a wealth of expression, in the interests of establishing a new architectural coherence.

The objective of our intervention on this site, which is rich in history and bears the stamp of a number of different eras, is the maintenance of the architectural and functional coherence of the College. We have therefore proposed a clear and comprehensible architecture, eschewing any monumental effects or features which are out of scale with their context, in the interests of the achievement of a high-quality redevelopment and extensions.

The school library, a simple single-storey structure, is arranged at the foot of the buildings: it will therefore be the lowest structure, and its roof will be highly visible. It has therefore been our intention that the roof of the school library should constitute a genuine fifth façade, contributing to visual comfort on the site. We have thus conceived a building clad in one material only, deployed in the same way on the façade and in the roofing.

The new buildings lie within a context which is dominated by brick. It was not our intention to expand further on this brick-built expression which, in our view, was not appropriate to the scale of the buildings to be constructed. We have opted for chromatic coherence, in the interests of the unity of the site, exploiting the contrast of the solidity and the mineral properties of brick, and its interplay with the lightness and the light effects provided by zinc.

The spaces built expand upon the theme of zinc, which is deployed in a number of ways. Rather than a series of different materials which, our view, would be excessively busy in a project of this scale, we prefer to work with one material only, exploring a variety of uses, functions and finishes. Zinc is thus employed here in façades, roofing, sun breakers and screens.