Air: Maison de l’Étudiant

The student's accomodation designerd by Air Architectures features a clear geometric principle, with a grid structure dotted with several tree trunks that serve as vertical supports.

Air Architectures, Maison de l’Etudiant, Orsay (Parigi). Photo © David Boureau

The AIR Architectures design for the Maison de l’Étudiant de l’Université de Paris XI in Orsay, in southern Paris, is easily reached on the RER line. The campus is home to France’s largest concentration of brains.

The Maison de l’Étudiant sits at the foot of a slope, a link between the forest above and the campus below. The architecture is open towards the constructed front and the woods, not just physically but symbolically, too. The Air Architectures design philosophy is to neither read nor interpret the features of the surrounding context but to reinforce them and so the Paris practice run by Cyrille Hanappe and Oliver Leclercq has designed a number of cubic volumes connected by a fractal-like roof, a geometric form that connects physically and symbolically with both the location and its occupants.

Air sees the Maison de l’Étudiant as a material projection of not only real but also metaphorical space because scientists use fractals to recreate nature, seeing a tree as a geometric composition of foliage, as recreated nature.

The construction features a clear geometric principle, with a grid structure dotted with several tree trunks that serve as vertical supports. Spaces distributed in a circle around the central one optimise the area given over to circulation, avoiding corridors in favour of a more generous rendezvous space. The programme initially envisaged a central café area for 30 people buy AIR Architectures convinced the client of the need for a larger place of encounter for researchers and so the central area has become the heart of the design, with a capacity for up to 300 and the area intended for corridors as a transit space. The design volumes were determined by technical choices ensuing from height optimisation based on the desired introduction of sunshine to exploit as much natural light as possible.

Air Architectures is convinced that architects must make society more fluid and has a strong belief in people and the fact that the shaping of their designed spaces must be driven by ergonomics, appropriations and the occupants’ living habits. Cyrille Hanappe and Olivier Leclercq say that they imagine a reinvented architectural scenario every time in which to offer a new living adventure places and people. They want to return the focus to people and their daily lives, so that the form adapts to its users and not vice versa – giving them greater freedom.