French architects LAN (Local Architecture Network) recently has completed 5 buildings complex of student accommodation located in Paris, 18 Arrondissement.

The driving idea guiding our project stems from the challenge of responding to the necessity for urban integration and creating optimum comfort for the residence's occupants in a convivial and intimate environment.

LAN

Student Residence, image courtesy LAN Architecture | Photo by Julien Lanoo

Student Residence, image courtesy LAN Architecture | Photo by Julien Lanoo

The context
The project for a student residence was considered in the context of the urban fabric of the La Chapelle district in Paris and its role in its evolution. The plot is on the corner of rue Philippe de Girard and rue Pajol in the 18th arrondissement, close to the ZAC Pajol, an ambitious redevelopment of former railway yards, on which social, cultural and sports amenities are currently being created.

The district is a very heterogeneous mixture of Haussmannian residential buildings, factories and workshops, and therefore has a richness and wide diversity of situations unusual within Paris itself.

Student Residence, image courtesy LAN Architecture | Photo by Julien Lanoo

The street and the courtyard
The project is composed of several buildings, whose volumes and voids depend on the context. On the street, three six-storey volumes are separated by two rifts providing access to the residence and vertical circulation.

The heights of the buildings at the back of the plot vary according to neighbouring buildings. In the middle, a spacious courtyard is lit by a rift in the south building, an extension of an existing void.

The courtyard, the heart of the project, provides access to the various buildings and defines their interrelationship. A 15 x15 metre square, it ensures sunlight for all the rooms and acts as a kind of green lung.

Student Residence, image courtesy LAN Architecture | Photo by Julien Lanoo

The materials
The strategy of creating a duality between street and courtyard was pursued in the choice of materials. The facades, instead of imposing a single image on the project, participate in creating the varying atmospheres of the spaces they envelop and delimit.

The buildings on the street are clad in dark, slate-coloured brick, while the buildings around the courtyard are clad with larch planking with folding louvred shutters in front of the windows and balconies. The facade along the entry passage is also clad with larch and announces the feeling of the space within. All the ground and wall surfaces in the courtyard are clad with the same light-coloured, flexible material, normally used for sports areas and playgrounds.

The choice of materials was dictated by technical and architectural concerns. Our research was guided by a desire for durability and the sober, refined and classical nature of our project.

Student Residence, image courtesy LAN Architecture | Photo by Julien Lanoo

The circulations
Generally speaking, the empty spaces in the courtyard and circulations could be said to be 'junk space' in that they are by-products of the design of the buildings. The project's ambition was to give these spaces so much quality that they create a genuine 'plus' for residents. The exterior spaces, interacting with the communal spaces and acting as a buffer between private spaces, are not merely for circulation but provide the conviviality our project seeks to create. As these spaces were not part of the project specifications, their uses can be defined and developed by residents.

The specifications
The brief specified the construction of a student residence of around 150 rooms, communal spaces, administrative premises and a caretaker's apartment, with RIVP acting as project manager for the CROUS, which will run the residence.

As one enters the residence via the rift on the left, one successively discovers the reception spaces, the administrative premises (on the corner of the street and the passageway), the communal facilities and the study and leisure areas around the courtyard.

The 143 rooms have three different typologies. Students have furnished rooms with an average surface area of 18m², with a bathroom and a kitchen area. The view of the courtyard creates a calm atmosphere conducive to concentration and study. The desks are always located near an outside view in order to benefit from natural lighting. Ten rooms were specially designed for people with reduced mobility.

Student Residence - Ground floor plan, drawing courtesy LAN Architecture

Energy performance
The project complies with the "Habitat and Environment" label's VHEP specifications. A combination of compactness, treatment of the envelope, and solar heat coupled with high-performance ventilation and heating (urban heating and solar panels) creates pleasant and comfortable accommodation. The concrete structure, insulated on the outside with 12 cm of mineral wool, brick or wood cladding and highperformance double-glazed fittings, provides efficient thermal insulation.

In winter the buildings retain their interior heat, and in summer their exterior insulation reduces solar and internal overheating, while inertia enables the capture of daytime heat and its retention during the night.

Student Residence - Massing, drawing courtesy LAN Architecture

Urban Integration
The site's strategic position at the junction of several streets in a bustling Paris district channelled our research towards a lively façade providing views into the heart of the block and encouraging appreciation of this inner space.

The two vertical rifts and the ground-floor transparency created by the bicycle park draw attention inwards and define this project emulating traditional buildings in Paris's former inner suburbs.

Continuity
The project is developed in a double scale perspective: one is the street's scale and the other is the building courtyard's one, respectively in a vertical and in an horizontal volumetric system. The urban strategy focalize on contextualising the best the project into the existing landscape, extending the voids of the suburb's tissue in aim to not make interfering the new construction on the habitual lightening of the neighbourhood.

Student Residence, image courtesy LAN Architecture | Photo by Julien Lanoo

Transparences
This communal space is related directly to the public space outside by the vertical rifts in the block on the street side. The transparency this creates strengthens the link between the plot's exterior and interior and attracts attention to the activity in the courtyard.

Circulations
The circulation system is very legible: the four vertical circulations are located at the plot's four corners. All circulations are lit naturally so that the landings can act as meeting places.

Student Residence, image courtesy LAN Architecture | Photo by Julien Lanoo

Common spaces
The exterior (common spaces) corridors retain an ambiguity with regards to their usage. They are infact conceived not solely as distributors but rather as collective spaces where social gatherings could occur.

Student Residence - Brick facade detail, drawing courtesy LAN Architecture

Bricks
The elevation facing the street is cladded with slate colored bricks. The nuance and the texture of the surface, as well as the façade's composition contribute to the over whole dynamic effect.

Student Residence - Wood facade detail, drawing courtesy LAN Architecture

Wood
The elevations facing the interior courtyard are cladded with thin vertical wood panels. Same facade treatment continues in front of the openings of the windows, where the grid becomes shutters. Which gives a strong unity to the whole courtyard elevations.

Student Residence - Typical room, drawing courtesy LAN Architecture

The rooms
Our prime concern in the design of the students' rooms was to create sunny accommodation that is easy to live in and personalise.

+ Project credits / data

Project: Construction of a 143-room student residence
Project manager: RIVP
Location: 21 rue Pajol and 65 rue Philippe de Girard, Paris 18, France
Budget: 8M € HT
Project area: 3,950 m²
Delivery: February 2011
Team: LAN (architects), Franck Boutté (HEQ consultant), LGX Ingénierie (HVAC, main contractor)
Project leaders: Sebastian Niemann, Venezia Ferret
Photographer: Julien Lanoo

+ About LAN (Local Architecture Network)

LAN (Local Architecture Network) was created by Benoit Jallon and Umberto Napolitano in 2002, with the idea of exploring architecture as an area of activity at the intersection of several disciplines.

This attitude has developed into a methodology enabling LAN to explore new territories and forge a vision encompassing social, urban, functional and formal questions.

LAN's projects seek to find elegant, contemporary answers to creative and pragmatic concerns. LAN has received several awards: the Nouveaux Albums de la Jeune Architecture (NAJA) prize awarded by the French Ministry of Culture and Communication (2004); the International Architecture Award from the Chicago Athenaeum and the European Urban Centre for Architecture, Art, Design and Urban Studies, the Archi-Bau Award, the Special Prize at the 12th World Triennale of Architecture, Sofia (2009); the AR Mipim Future Projects Award and the Europe 40 Under 40 Award (2010).

+ All images and drawings courtesy LAN | Photo by Julien Lanoo

+ Other projects by LAN on +MOOD

Tower 486 Mina El Hosn | LAN Architecture

Headquarters for Marchesini France | LAN Architecture

‘STREETLIGHTS‘ is a lighting installation of 220 vintage headlamps created by .PSLAB on DOSarchitects studio‘s external façade for Clerkenwell Design Week in London, United-Kingdom during 24th -26th May 2011. It will remain in place until June, 30th 2011.

'STREETLIGHTS', image courtesy .PSLAB

On the occasion of the 2011 Clerkenwell Design Week, multi-award-winning design company DOSarchitects and creative lighting firm .PSLAB launched a daring one-off temporary installation on the external façade of DOSarchitects' studio, using original vintage car headlamps to light the street.

'STREETLIGHTS', image courtesy .PSLAB

The Project

In 2008, .PSLAB created original lighting products for the DOS studio on Lever Street. In the offices' entrance stairwell, .PSLAB adapted to the spatial needs of the site with vintage car headlamp fixtures. The red wiring  for these products was made external and incorporated into the overall design, and an award-winning holder product – honourable mention at the Reddot Design Award 2009 – was developed to control the direction of these cables.

'STREETLIGHTS', image courtesy .PSLAB

When planning their intervention for Clerkenwell Design Week 2011, .PSLAB drew on these headlamp fixtures for their external installation with DOS. The large-scale public project represents a newly confident, tangible approach for .PSLAB.

The temporary nature of the installation allowed a freedom of scale and vision not usually available for the exterior of a building. Lighting the entire office façade required overcoming the physical constraints of the site, mainly the uneven external surface of the building.

'STREETLIGHTS', image courtesy .PSLAB

Design Walkthrough

The key technical detailing in this context was the metal 'skin' that was fixed parallel to the wall to overcome the constraint of the site's uneven surfaces of varying materials, including brick, glass and steel. The steel 'skin' held the headlamp fixtures in a bold pattern, with the wiring hidden inside it. The lamps could be fitted with energy-saving light bulbs, and easily serviced from the interior of the offices.

'STREETLIGHTS', image courtesy .PSLAB

The Launch

On 25th May 2011, over 200 colleagues and friends of .PSLAB and DOSarchitects gathered at the DOS studio on Lever Street to experience the installation. The piece was lit during the evening, projecting bold discs of light outwards into the street and inwards into the office space. In an informal evening of drinks and live music, there was conversation around design and architecture as images from both companies' projects were projected onto the walls, and feedback on the installation was overwhelmingly positive.

+ About .PSLAB + DOSarchitects

.PSLAB

.PSLAB brings together a multi-disciplinary team of over 100 architects, designers, engineers, technicians and artisans. They develop lighting products, from concept to construction for context-specific spaces.

They have given life to diverse projects' types and scales from homes to shops, offices to restaurants, hotels to art galleries and gardens to exhibitions. Their original pieces have won many international awards and contribute to an accessible archive of customcrafted products, developed in dialogue with their teams – founded in Beirut, and now working worldwide from bases in London, Stuttgart and Bologna.

They will be expanding their presence in London in the near future to include a new showroom.

DOSarchitects London

DOSarchitects was formed by Lorenzo Grifantini and Tavis Wright, who have worked with some of the world's most prestigious architectural firms. Their combined vision has developed a multi-award-winning company – whose achievements include winning the 2005 Dubai Tower competition – that has established itself as a leading name and light among European architecture firms.

+ All images courtesy .PSLAB

+ Selected projects by .PSLAB on +MOOD

MYBAR in Beirut | .PSLAB Beirut

RE/DO | Piuarch + .PSLAB Beirut

In Ponzano Veneto, Italy, C+S Associati designed the Ponzano Primary School for 375 children aged from 6 to 10. It has 15 classrooms and special classrooms for art, music, computer, language and science, a gymnasium, a canteen and a library.

Ponzano Primary School, image courtesy C+S Associati

Inside the sprawl of the Veneto Region, where Ponzano is settled, this Primary School constitutes a new node, a meeting place for the whole community. Part of the building (the gymnasium and some of the classrooms) is in fact accessible by everybody in the after-school hours.

Ponzano Primary School -Concept, drawing courtesy C+S Associati

The school becomes a 'society building' where collective spaces are very important. Firstly, in the general outline: all spaces are gathered around a central square, memory of the monastic cloisters (in the common memory they are the places of past knowledge preservation). Then, also in the design of the building’s section: all the spaces face each other (though maintaining their specificity like the classrooms which are opaque until cm 130 and glazed above, allowing the children to exhibit their work towards the common spaces) and are reflected by the transparent and coloured walls.

This complexity reminds us the model of the industrial districts in Veneto where people are incited to learn from each other by exchanging experiences.

Ponzano Primary School, image courtesy C+S Associati

The school becomes a 'society building', a space of possible multietnic exchange and comparison. It becomes a threshold, were to keep together a landscape of memory and a landscape of contemporary.

In this project memory is represented by a remind to cultivation, the red coloured 'barchessas' of the Veneto Region. The contemporary is linked to the Benetton factories (which are in the plot nearby) and their culture of good design and philosophy spreading colour democracy all over the world. In this sense the school design becomes the scenograpy of a dream (of a fairytail would the children say) where the main characters are the children together with their teachers and the comunity around the school.

Ponzano Primary School, image courtesy C+S Associati

During the design phase C+S Associati wrote and illustrated a story with six panels to explain the project to the children and organised a web site (www.nuovascuola ponzano.it) where everybody could find all the materials of the project. This partecipation activity was followed by visits to the construction site.

Ponzano Primary School, image courtesy C+S Associati

The design of the elevation is offered by a thin filigree. It sews together the roof and the ground and transforms the elevation in a deeper threshold designed by the shadows of the red bend pillars on the wood and glass wall inside the arcade where all the classrooms are open towards.

Ponzano Primary School, image courtesy C+S Associati

The arcade is also the screen against the sun together with a system of rolling curtains (mounted on a metallic structure) which automatically unroll under the control of the BMS system.

Another design topic is that of intervisibility. C+S Associati are convinced that children can learn very well also copying one from the other (this is the reason why also the classrooms' walls are glazed and can easily become windows exposing the children's works.

Ponzano Primary School - Section, drawing courtesy C+S Associati

Due to his huge volume, the gymnasium has been dag in the ground and natural light is brought inside modelling the ground with new enbankments.

The classrooms where the children spend most of their time face south-east and south-west so as to improve their daylight exposure. Thanks to a judicious orientation, a thick insulation, a green roof and sophisticated technologies (geothermal heating, photovoltaic panels, natural ventilation chimneys, BMS: building automation system) the school consumes only 3.6 kWh/mc/year, reaching the Italian Class A+ efficiency rating with a building cost of only 960 euro/sqm including furniture: a proof that the very strong economic and functional requirements of an educational building are compatible with energetic efficiency and high quality interior spaces.

Ponzano Primary School, image courtesy C+S Associati

The six topics which the design is founded on are:

1. Context: the 'red thread' which sews the roof to the ground is a large arcade facing south, memory of Veneto Region Barchessas. Memory is also linked to the typological choice of organising the spaces around a courtyard, reminding the spaces where the monks have preserved our culture.
2. Materials and colours: Materials and colours used for the external design are those of the Veneto Region tradition rural buildings. But inside the colour becomes a code to use the space as we usually do in our school projects: green is the colour of relation spaces and dark grey that of special spaces. Natural wood and graphic design is used to recognise the other spaces.
3. Center and thresholds. The courtyard is the centre of the project. As a 'roman domus' every space is facing the courtyard itself. The thresholds are also very important. The most important is the arcade.
4. Transparency and society. The school is a democratic space. It is the space of work and relationship, comparing ideas and experiences.
5. Polifunctional. We like to use the metaphore of the city to speak about the school.
6. Sustanability. The school energetic consume is 3,6 kwh/mc/year and it costed only 960 €/sqm.

Ponzano Primary School - Floor plans, drawing courtesy C+S Associati

+ Project credit / data

Project: PONZANO PRIMARY SCHOOL: A 'SOCIETY BUILDING'
Ponzano primary school is a sustainable building in energetic, social and cost control meaning.
Location: Ponzano Veneto, Italy
Energy: It consumes only 3.6 kWh/mc/year.
Society: participated design phase with children and teachers
Cost control: the cost of the building including furniture is 960 euro/sqm
Floor area: 4.102 sqm
Building cost: 3.968.275,15 euro
Chronology: 2008: project, 2009: construction
Typology: Education | School

Architects and art directors: C+S Associati: Carlo Cappai, Maria Alessandra Segantini | http://www.cipiuesse.it/
Assistants: Guido Stella, Mauro Tonello, Andrea Dal Ferro, Nicola Di Pietro, Giulia Riso, Fabiana Aneghini, Matteo Bandiera
Structures, installation and work supervision: Favero & Milan Ingegneria s.r.l.
Graphic project: Italo Lupi
Illustrations of the tale: Roberta Gorni

Contractor: Paccagnan s.p.a., Treviso, Italy
Design coordination: Bruno Cisilotto
Client: Comune di Ponzano Veneto, Ponzano Patrimonio e Servizi
Photographers: Alessandra Bello, Pietro Savorelli

Awards/exibitions:
Biennale of Architecture “People meet in architecture” 2010, Italian Pavillon
Triennale di Milano, Exibition Green Life
Sfide 2009 Prize of the Italian Ministry of Landscape and Environment, Winner
WA Awards, Winner of the 7th Cycle
Equivivere Prize 2010, Winner

+ All images and drawings courtesy C+S Associati | Photo by Alessandra Bello + Pietro Savorelli

+ Other school projects on +MOOD

Restructuration and Extension of High school Albert Einstein | N+B architects

Middle School, Morières les Avignon | N+B architects

Gjerdrum Secondary School | Kristin Jarmund Architects