A commitment to the local in a school overlooking the Seine. "Les Coteaux Fleuris School" por HEMAA Architectes

21/07/2022. [Heudebouville] France
metalocus, DIEGO DOMÍNGUEZ GONZÁLEZ
Asemas 2024.01
CIN-VALENTINE 01
HEMAA Architectes renovated the "Les Coteaux Fleuris School" in the village of Heudobouville, France, to better blend in with the surrounding buildings and the architecture of the village.

The architecture of the Norman village is characterised by the use of wood and slate roofs. With the use of these materials, the school "Les Coteaux Fleuris School" combines with the slate roof of the Heudobouville Town Hall. All these resources implemented and the companies involved in the construction of the school are native to the area.
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HEMAA Architectes has designed this school with a view to future remodelling and expansion, with the possibility of adding classrooms, pavilions or other buildings with a variety of functions in the future. The creation of open spaces also allows for the possible extension of the courtyards, which are shaped like a valley to collect rainwater for irrigation of the vegetable gardens they contain.

The buildings have a timber frame and a slate-clad gable roof, completed with large glass windows on the sides and on the roof to illuminate the interior.

"Les Coteaux Fleuris School" by HEMAA Architectes. Photograph by Sergio Grazia.


"Les Coteaux Fleuris School" by HEMAA Architectes. Photograph by Sergio Grazia.
 

Description of project by HEMAA Architectes

On a remarkable site whose backdrop is the hillsides of the Seine Valley, this new school is attached to the Norman village of Heudebouville (France).

A landscape of wooded countryside
From the history of the place, the school borrows materials and morphology: the wood of the half-timbered houses of the city center for the glazed frames and the framework; the slate of the bell tower and the town hall to clad and protect the facades and the roof. The morphology of the houses and farm buildings on the site is reinterpreted, giving rise to large contemporary "longères" ("longère" is the name for a long, narrow dwelling, developing along the axis of its peak, typically inhabited by farmers and artisans and typical of the regions of Brittany and Normandy in northwestern France).

The geography of the site orders the implantation of the work, the houses inserted according to the contours of the land and respect the natural soil. These guidelines delimit the playgrounds, draw orchards and become valleys collecting rainwater from the entire site to feed a landscaped basin below.

Anticipating the future
This layered organization anticipates the planned growth of the village and the future expansion of the school, with each household having the opportunity to expand. While respecting the original layout, classrooms can be added, the canteen, courtyards and yards can be extended and the equipment can accommodate more students and users. In this respect, the networks and fire safety systems already take this possible growth into account. The structural system in porticos, by the total absence of an intermediate bearing point, allows this future evolution and complete modularity of the premises. The facades and the roof are made up of modules pre-assembled off-site, combining air/water tightness, insulation and structure. The 5x2 m pieces, developed in 3D with the carpenter, have allowed managing the construction time.

Carbon footprint
The construction of the school is part of a process to reduce its carbon footprint. The use of wood, and slate, the integration of photovoltaic panels and the absence of fossil fuel consumption for the heating of the equipment makes it possible to reach the ambitious E3C2 and BEPOS levels.

Finally, the site was entirely built with local materials and companies established in the region.

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Asemas 2024.01
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More information

Architects
HEMAA Architectes (Charles Hesters and Pierre Martin-Saint-Etienne), associated to Hesters Oyon.
Client
City of Heudebouville.
Area
1,500 sqm.
Budget
€ 4.5 Million.
Dates
February 2022.
Location
Heudebouville, France.
Photography
Sergio Grazia.

Charles Hesters and Pierre Martin-Saint-Etienne HEMAA Architectes

Charles Hesters and Pierre Martin-Saint-Etienne, the brains behind Hemaa, place context at the center of their approach. Many architects of their generation would no doubt say the same. The originality of Hemaa lies not in this attention, but in the way it informs their architecture and influences the development of the project. The physical situation of the site is matched by the conceptual position of the proposal, which reconfigures, rethinks and reinvents the place through a series of questions that serve as a safeguard. What scale of building to fit into the context? What material expresses a local anchorage? How to amplify the use and keep a constructive quality? From the sum of these questions, an agile, flexible project emerges, dividing the program between different entities, different volumes. In this process of segmentation, the void takes on the importance of the full, the hollows, the interstices invite to inhabit the site as much as the built volumes. At the risk of being offside, Charles Hesters and Pierre Martin-Saint-Etienne never hesitate to take a step to the side in order to make the unexpected happen. The specifications of the competition are reviewed in light of the site even before the first sketches. A careful examination of the regulations and the topography prepares the reconfiguration of the public space by the project. For Hemaa, the benefits of an operation are not limited to its parcel. It extends to its immediate environment, by the loosening of the vis-àvis, the creation of squares, passages... In two words, the restitution of a public void by the private volumes.

Fragmentation is neither an artifice nor a crutch: it accompanies the quality of use. In housing programs, it leads to the reduction of the thickness of the building and favors the implementation of through apartments. In a school, the insertion of the program on a mode of the pavilion will leave views on the landscape and the possibility of implanting noues for the natural treatment of the infiltration of rainwater. After the mass plan, the constructive and material dimension questions again the context. What material would best fit into the project territory? Resolutely curious, Charles Hesters and Pierre Martin- Saint-Etienne explore without dogmatism the range of environmental technical solutions - wood, stone, earth - which they mix with traditional solutions, having for sole strategy to put the right material in the right place. The learning required by each constructive mode extends the skills of the agency, reinforcing it in a technical field of action that it considers inseparable from the profession of architect.

For Hemaa, therefore, a good architect is a good builder. He is also, as we have seen, a composer who interprets the qualities and defects of a site to prolong  its history. Charles Hesters and Pierre Martin-Saint-Etienne know that one day their projects may be transformed and rather than wait for this evolution, they prepare and anticipate it, imagining arrangements that will extend their buildings. In yesterday’s project lies the project of tomorrow. As a builder, composer and craftsman, Hemaa will not hesitate to use the tricks of the trade to make a building invisible, or on the contrary, to make it appear larger than it is when it is necessary to «hold» the site. By drawing on the sophisticated artifices of the architectural discipline, Hemaa invests its architecture with a soft magic, with the well-being of all the inhabitants of a city in mind.
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