The School of Architecture at Marne la Vallée strategically organizes all the rigorously programmed activities; the studios, the classrooms and administrative functions peripherally to a large「unprogrammed」void. This void is a space given over to the students to accommodate and even encourage unanticipated and spontaneous events and also serves as the main system of circulation.Is there a mode of architectural notation capable of exploring such a strategy?
The traditional architectural drawing cannot describe multiple points of view, change of light over time or the motion of bodies inherent to the type of space suggested above. The computer animation serves as a better tool to describe the various dynamics at work and, through the interactive station, places the viewer in a situation of choice. One can travel along motion paths that follow a series of continuous circuits through and across the void or control panoramic animations that describe space from a revolving point of view. The various formats are collected into a system that also describes the project it portrays. The motion paths superimposed on the section of the project is in itself a new diagram, suggesting properties through its specific medium.
image1: "amphitheater lighting studies"
SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE, MARNE LA VALLÉE, FRANCE
URBANISM
1.1 Conceving of a new school of architecture located 30 minutes outside Paris raises two questions. The first one has to do with the direction that architectural education will take in the next decades. The second has to do with the "attraction" that a school situated on the edge, the periphery, the margin of the social, economic and cultural density of an urban center can have.1.2 Today, a triple revolution - informational, interdisciplinary and ideological - is in the making. At Champs-sur-Mame, located 30 minutes from the heart of Paris, one is at the same electronic distance from London, Berlin, Tokyo, New York or Delhi. There is global architectural culture and information; the conditions alone are local.
1.3 Historically, people headed towards the centers in order to leam, teach and debate. Here, at Champs-sur-Mame, it is the opposite that one is doing: one decenters, "marginalizes" oneself in some way. However, what could appear as a considerable handicap can be transformed into a valuable advantage. Located away from habits of thought to the conservation of historical centers the new site, set amidst a new 20,000-student technological complex, can be seen as a starting point for a new model.
1.4 For this new school we sought to design a space conceived for the age of the modem and of monility, a new type of school of architecture that does not look for inspiration to the old Ecole des Beaux Arts, the Bauhaus, the American universities or elsewhere.
1.5 Our project starts from the following thesis: there are building-generators of events. They are often condensers of the city; as much through their programs as through their spatial potential they accelerate a cultural or social transformation that is already in progress.
image2: "night view of patio" image3: "view of hall looking west"
ARCHITECTURE
2.1 What we call the City of Architecture rearranges all the rigorously programmed activities around an "unprogrammed", "event-oriented" large central space (25×100m), activated by the density of what surrounds it, which in the most unexpected way becomes a large space for celebrations and balls, encounters and debates, projections and artists' installations, the most serious symposia and avant-garde exhibitions. A social and cultural space, the central hall gathers all the circulation of the school. Whatever the level of attendance on a given day, one sees the constant movement of students, giving the hall liveliness and dynamism.2.2 All the functional and programmatic parts of the school open onto the large interior rectangle: the studios, the ateliers the computer spaces, the médiathèque, the faculty offices, the administration and research areas surround and define this large cultural "communal" and event-seeking space.
2.3 The building is also a large promenade that, as in a city, can have several points of departure. The two main ones are from the large staircase towards the south in the continuation of the Descartes axis and from the ramp to the west. From the main entry (south), one arrives at the reception area, the exhibition and evaluation spaces and the bar/restaurant. Walking in an oblique direction one then climbs at an oblique angle over the 400-seat ampitheater and reaches the jury spaces and studios. One could also take the "short-cut" of the staircase towards the research areas, the administration or the studios. Other short-cuts, from the roofs of the auditoriums, allow direct passage from the walkways of the administration or faculty offices to the studios.
2.4 As in many institutions, access is often by car through an interior parking area. In the City of Architecture this arrivals is made through a patio in the middle of the hall.
image4: "interactive station main screen" 2.5 From the central hall it is possible to see the activity in the studios. The producation of projects is part of the image of the school: students and teachers see what is happening---information, communication, debate. The double orientation of the studios gives them a south side (towards the large hall) and a north side with stable light necessary for a new and extensive use of computers in architectural design.
2.6 The general level for the reception and circulation is at +3.50 in order to allow a better relation with the studios and the staircases. The interior landscape slopes up to level +10.50, passing through the Jury and student work exhibition spaces and above the amphitheaters seating 400 and, altematively, 135 or 90 people: exchange is at the heart of the school.
2.7 The studio spaces and the ateliers are based on the same loft-space envelope that allows maximum flexibility for groups of 25, 50 or 75 students. The seminar and jury/pin-up rooms are interchangeble, inserted between the studios in order to encourage debate between design projects and history/theory.
2.8 The small blocks of the south facade permit a supple organization of the faculty offices, those of researchers and administrative spaces. Their carving tries to avoid any framing and any monolithic or bureaucratic effect.
2.9 Equally an urban environment and an electronic machine, the City of Architecture is wary of aesthetic tendencies as well as of humanist theories directed toward search for a formal morality. It is, instead, through the rigorous amplification of its programmatic logic that it develops the conditions required for inquiry into the new century's architectural conditions.
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