STUDYING - WINNER

MARCIANO ARCHITECTURE (leader) and JOSE MORALES ARCHITECTE (associate) agencies have imagined a project that combines the agricultural culture of Châteaurenard with a more urban vision, translating students’ emancipation and lifestyle, as the future citizens of the world. This agrarian environment reveals a rigorous landscape of cypress hedges and hedgerows. In addition to providing protection from the wind, these trees create an evocative rhythm. It is transcribed in the structural framework of the building by the large concrete colonnades and the SOLEAL windows.

This fractal work is also found inside the building, with the acoustic baffles in the ceilings, the TECHNAL joineries and the wooden battens used to treat remarkable spaces. The joineries have thin and slender profiles, reaching a height of 3 m on the ground floor and 2.40 m on the first floor, creating a harmonious whole. The width of the windows, 1.10 m, is identical. The aluminium mullion seems to disappear behind the concrete posts.  The visible frame is discreet to maximise the natural light intake and transparency towards the landscape. Pupils and teachers benefit from visual comfort daily, positively impacting their concentration and well-being.

These SOLEAL doors and windows, and the GEODE curtain walls in the hall, are thermally performant, respectively 0.9 w/m² and 1.1 w/m². They contribute to the “Mediterranean Sustainable Building” standard set by the region. The high school is designed like a small town. The forecourt, the porch, the hall and the corridors are all urban sequences that form a real "agora". The courtyard is a unitary, landscaped, fluid space, from which the teaching areas are accessible with stairs leading to the upper floor from the courtyard and the interior street.

The architectural style is expressed through concrete, a material chosen for its link to the ground and the surrounding hills. To match its raw colour, the joineries and the lighting are finished in grey white (RAL 9002).