Ecole, crèche, piscine et espace public de Chandieu

Type

Éducation, Équipements publics, Espaces publics

Date de réalisation

2016

Ingénieur civil

Ingeni SA

Maître de l'ouvrage

Ville de Genève

Autre(s) intervenant(s)

Paysagiste: In Situ Artistes: Eric Lanz, Pieter Vermeersch, Peter Downsbrough

Surface brute

10'472 m2

Coût

64'000'000

Procédure

concours

Architecte

atelier Bonnet architectes

Interview de l'architecte

Descriptif

The new institution of Chandieu is a both urban and social response to a place whose industrial function had blocked a landscape development that had been called for as early as the post-war period. Here the project is seen as a kind of “empathic seam” linking the parks of Trembley and Beaulieu. The “bâtiment-navire” (ship's hull) constructed at the edge of the site through an extension of the programme devolved to the district, is accompanied by a ground plan design which is becoming a key feature of the project for this part of the “green city”. Like a child's construction, for which it could be a metaphor, it is a subtle aggregation of the functions served on the site, with volumes of different proportions that enliven the structure's dimensions. Visual openings both urban and internal provide the necessary porosities for the face over the full length of the structure. The way of moving around the building, like teaching, adopts a rhetoric made up of contiguities, programmed affinities and features that capture the eye and the light. The building's architecture also refers to the ship image so dear to modern architects, with a horizontal “waterline” demarcating two colours and materials, the world of the community from that of school activities: the immaculate white of the façade for one and for the other a concrete base in a colour with connotations of earth and soil as if to better anchor it in the landscape. This compositional dichotomy, and quite codified style that often reflects the interior, relates to the Mediterranean referents to which the architects are sometimes intuitively indebted.