PASSAGE
ENSACF - 1st semester 2021
Project partially in tandem with Louise Rouaux for the competition part, independently for the PFE part
Supervisors: Lois de Dinechin, Yvon Cottier, Audrey Carrara, Pierre Gommier, Mathilde Lavenu
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26th edition of the IACOBUS international competition between the architectural schools of Clermont-Ferrand, La Coruña, Regensburg and Yerevan.
Results: 2nd French Prize
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The PFE is a personal development of the project presented during the IACOBUS competition, allowing to go into the detail of the intervention, raising the question of the technical constraint and the maintenance of the architectural gesture.
Results: Admitted with honors and congratulations from the jury
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For the 26th edition of the IACOBUS international competition, the heritage rehabilitation project is targeting this year the Fabrica de Armas located in La Coruña, Spain. French, Spanish, German and Armenian students must imagine how the administrative pavilion of this disused arms factory must be rehabilitated to accommodate the new headquarters of the city's technological city. The building, built in the 1940s has certain qualities, without being a historical monument ... How to intervene on this existing? How to transmit this heritage without distorting it, when we are changing its primary function, with the addition of a 400-seat auditorium, a library, a museum ...?
IACOBUS Competition Part
In addition to this, you will need to know more about it.
The Arms Factory of La Coruna is organized according to a symmetry, a hierarchy and a strong logic, it is characteristic of military and industrial architecture. It fits in with its time, appearing as a heritage although without the value of a historical monument. Different elements within this pavilion are worthy of being preserved: the reception hall with its glass roof and marble, the arrangements of palm trees and the gardens, the overall reading of the facades, their simple modenatures which are part of the local interpretation of Francoist architecture. There is an overall unity on the site, which has been very little altered for almost 80 years.
In addition to this, you will need to know more about it.
The intervention seeks to fit into this unity, by adding an element that is also treated in a homogeneous manner, while bringing real added value to the gardens as well as to the backyard, which is currently neglected. The structure and the wooden facades, through the moldings and the frame, become a contemporary echo of the existing, existing whose constructive truth is revealed by the interior intervention ...
The name "passage" allows to translate the different characteristics, complexes that the interior courtyard, carries. Both a place of circulation and distribution, it also makes it possible to make the physical and symbolic transition between past and contemporary times. This is a transmission since the weapon factory, well inherited from the past, passes from a state of abandonment to a state of life and activities, grouped precisely in this interior "passage".
PFE part
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The detail makes it possible to specify a certain number of things: local wood species used, principle of modular and flexible office for a lasting use of the frame, revelation of the interior structural principles by the laying bare of the concrete frame and the addition of 'a completely independent frame ...
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The latter allows the intervention to be read, by having two heterogeneous structures intersect in the same spatiality, each one representing a temporality: the past, the present; concrete, wood.
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The visitor's path thus makes him circulate in the "Passage", this in-between, in which the north facade is revealed by the possible distance from it. This distance is necessary for its understanding, since ultimately its modenatures, its reliefs, are not worked in a detail that can be appreciated up close. Their interests, by the shadows they produce, by the play of the cladding of the facade, is understood and justified when we look at the facade from a more global point of view, from a wider angle.
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In detail, the connections are thus based on the existing decorations to make it possible to create connection points which appear as an extension of the work of the molding, linking the two architectures in a simple way.
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The central space thus delimited allows the transition between the existing and the addition, by interventions respecting the building. This versatile space must become suitable for users, and we can imagine exhibition spaces here, as represented here for example with the temporary exhibition of the project for building 1 of the weapon factory. The space thus evolves to become more than a simple place where one passes, but to become a real space of life, exhibition, a café, a space of relaxation, reading, work. The north facade, which is now set back, hardly visible, and poorly highlighted, finally becomes the backdrop for this new living space.