On 7 May, at 18:30, the award ceremony will take place in the Mies van der Rohe Pavilion in Barcelona.
School Refectory in Montbrun-Bocage
The jury was drawn by the extremely precise implementation and design decisions which make the refectory a remarkable project built on a relatively small budget. The work was done with extreme humbleness, taking into account the context of the village and the immediate landscape, thereby creating a very respectful work of architecture.
As Benjamin Aubry, architect and expert of the EU Mies Award expressed, "the simplicity of its devices and construction offers generous space, excellent capacity of use and immense poetry".
Description of project by BAST
The existing school is a building built at the beginning of the twentieth century, enhanced by a plinth of about 60 cm. Its walls are made of factory walls, arranged symmetrically and braced by the two main facades. A courtyard closes the boundary of the longest part of the plot. The complex of buildings is situated in the centre of a trapezoidal plot bounded by two regional roads at the exit of the village. The façades of the courtyard facing the road are treated with a wall built of local stone. In order to make the existing school accessible through the courtyard, and in anticipation of the construction of a school canteen, a new courtyard is proposed in which a platform allows the agreement between the new pavilion and the existing building.
The new dining room building is located on this platform that borders the D74 road. The ground floor of the existing school becomes level 0.00 as a reference for the dining room and so that all the buildings are at the same height. The dining room is entirely made of wood: CLT type wood panels as the supporting element, and structural CLT panels for the roof. Externally insulated, the claddings are also larch wood panels. Without seeking a direct confrontation with the existing, the new project is the opportunity to return the same level of operation to the buildings, generate a series of connections between them that can improve teaching activities and use a rational and rapid construction system on site, allowing maximum natural lighting to be achieved inside.
