Barrault Pressacco

The project consists in the transformation of a building and the densification of a plot located at the core of the quartier Saint Blaise – a succession of open islets in the middle of which disparate and heterogeneous objects are inserted.
Two programmes have to be integrated, laboratories and students’ accommodations, and our proposition consists in their clear separation. The labs settle in the existing building, thus taking advantage of its significant thickness, while the students’ accommodations are the subject of a new construction.
The implantation of the new L-shaped building generates with the existing building a new private space that will be dedicated to students. The common facilities of this scheme settle in the garden level, protected by the new construction.
A facade principle, common to the two buildings, coats the volumes, and organises a set of correspondences between the programmes. The facades’ wooden constructional system, and a regular measure for the whole project, offer topicality to the existing building and permanency to the new edifice.