NB Architectes: A. Einstein High School

Drawing inspiration from the campus model and taking the court as major element of the project, Elodie Nourrigat and Jacques Brion completed Einstein High School's renovation in Bagnols sur Cèze.

The overall restructuring of the Albert Einstein High School ends with the completion of the last building renovation developed by the architect agency NB (Elodie Nourrigat & Jacques Brion) associated with François Privat architects.

The Albert Einstein High School is a vast building of the 60’s. The objective was to think a new spatial organization of the site in order to provide at students, teachers and the administration staff, a workspace and a real place of life appropriable by all.

The project draws inspiration from campus model, which presents the advantage to be flexible and to allow a better identification of education’s poles.

The court is the major element of the project, a meeting’s place but also a transition place. Its localization offers directs connections with the cafeteria, the restaurant place, administration, workshop, general teaching and school life rooms. It allows to gather the students during their free time. The landscape treatment of the court is voluntary urban type like a central place, mainly mineral, allowing a differentiation with the gardens. It was also necessary to achieve low heights buildings with low influence on the ground to get a better distribution and space’s occupation.

Spaces are treated and easily recognizable to assert an idea of sequences and gratitude education’s pole. Densify the gardens between the buildings can provide a plant screen that enhances the visual and thermal comfort facades comfort. Visual borderlines are more and more wide thanks to the preserving of the green space in the Northwest of the High School.

The project proposes to create an alternation between dense wooded areas, buildings, more minerals places like the circulations areas equipped with benches and shade structures, and specific soil treatment which provide landscape diversity. The objective is to find a building / plant balance.

"Restructuring an educational institution is to plan ahead and think about the long term. Our intervention takes into account the educational project, the architectural flexibility, the environmental protection and the public character of the building. The natural elements have to become the symbols of the equipments even more when it is about places of training. Thinking a sustainable development project requires taking account of qualitative materials, technical work on energy management, but also a logical layout of workplaces. The intervention allows to restore coherence and feature to the set by means of a new spatial scenography," explain the architects.

The last building designed with landscaping, reflects the logic and strategy of reconquest the place. It hosts an application restaurant as well as teaching rooms. Particular attention has been given to the building envelope. Working on a set thickness of the transitional area between the inside and the outside, the skin of the building is available in a colourful alternating between aluminium panels painted and sun breezes. The sun breezes offer vibrations that contrast with the concrete shell. The facilities offer specific meeting places around vegetated entity.

Albert Einstein High School
Bagnols sur Cèze, Nimes
Architects: Elodie Nourrigat & Jacques Brion – NB Architectes
Collaborators: François Privat – Partner architect
Client: Région Languedoc Roussillon
Assistant of the Client: Languedoc Roussillon Aménagement
Project area: 2,300 sqm + landscaping
Cost: 4.2 Millions €
Construction: November 2012
Photography: Paul Kozlowski