School of Engineers in Bretagne

South Brittany’s Higher School of Engineering is a microcosm the unity of which is organized around the compact, colorful central monolith from which the building’s two wings radiate. The monolith contains two essential areas: the amphitheater and the cafeteria.

Starting in the competition phase, the design for this central room was contributed to by artist David Saltiel. The school is part of an overall reflection by ANMA about interstitial spaces. Fostering interaction between students, teachers, researchers and staff, they are essential to the process of the school’s positive synergy. Whether they enable students and faculty to isolate themselves (like the faculty council’s meeting room and its terrace overlooking the entire building) or come together (like the tiered terraces of the roof), they shape the sense of the same shared place.

photograph by © Sergio Grazia

With each place of higher education, it has designed ANMA manifests its ambition to go beyond briefs, offer living space and shared venues that enable students to live and learn together. The polyvalent spaces are organized in a rationale of flows. Study cells where students may meet to work together are added to the traditional classrooms. Learning is no longer isolated but networked and connected.

photograph by © Sergio Grazia

The concourses become public spaces connected to the city. The university thus opens onto its environment with an idea borrowed from the American campus model but applied on a French scale with constraints of density and mixed use with housing briefs. Interactions between the student city and the city of everyday life incorporate these different projects into the same rationale of urban planning.

photograph by © Sergio Grazia

Project Info
Architects : ANMA
Location : Corancy, France
Year : 2013
Type : Educational/ School/ Faculty/ University
Photographs : Sergio Grazia