Design of Jules Verne School Complex: Organization of Educational and Urban Spaces

Design of Jules Verne School Complex: Organization of Educational Spaces

The Jules Verne School Complex consists of an architectural structure focused on the functional hierarchy of educational spaces. On the ground floor, three kindergarten classrooms are allocated, each equipped with adjacent rest areas, reflecting the emphasis on creating a child-friendly learning environment.

First Floor: Primary Education and Arts

Moving to the first floor, there are seven classrooms for primary education, in addition to a visual arts workshop. This arrangement highlights the focus on providing specialized spaces for developing students’ creative and cognitive skills, reflecting a design philosophy that connects academic learning with artistic expression.

Administrative Services and Educational Support Areas

At the entrance of the ground floor is the administrative area, which includes technical spaces, offices, and the teachers’ lounge. Additionally, the library, extracurricular activity area, and motor skills development room are positioned near the kindergarten classrooms and the main hall. This layout demonstrates the architects’ concern with bringing educational support services closer to the younger age groups, facilitating daily movement and enhancing interaction between students and teachers.

Site and Historical Transformations

The project is located on a part of the former “Cité de l’Aurore” site, where five residential towers once stood before being demolished. This architectural history reflects the urban transformations experienced in the area, as well as the subsequent opportunities to redesign the space to accommodate modern uses.

Visual Fluidity and Green Pathways

The area is characterized by gardens that once surrounded the residential towers, providing a clear visual continuity from Rue de l’Aurore. In addition, pedestrian pathways have been developed leading to a backdrop rich with dense trees, enhancing the movement experience within the site and creating a balance between the built environment and the surrounding nature.

Urban Character of Rue de l’Aurore

The remaining section of Rue de l’Aurore features a graduated distribution of buildings, giving the street visual fluidity and clarity. This arrangement reflects the planners’ focus on organizing urban space in a way that serves each function within the neighborhood.

Fences and Hedges: Separation and Multiple Functions

The street is lined with fences and hedges defining the entrances to residences, while the facades of the kindergarten and school cafeteria are highlighted to be clear and distinctive. As for the opaque fences of the Jules Verne Middle School, they provide greater privacy and separate the educational space from its surroundings, reflecting a balance between openness to the street and maintaining the school’s identity and student safety.

Urban Challenges of Redevelopment

The redevelopment of the “Cité de l’Aurore” site presents a series of major urban challenges, requiring a delicate balance between preserving the historical character of the area and creating innovative solutions for the future.

Maintaining Visual Openness

One of the main concerns is how to preserve the continuity of Rue de l’Aurore while maintaining its distinctive visual openness toward the tree-lined backdrop. This openness is a fundamental element of the user experience and directly affects the quality of the surrounding public spaces.

Creating a New Urban Sequence

Another challenge involves designing a new urban sequence that paves the way for future housing projects in the southern part of the site. This requires flexible planning that seamlessly connects the existing urban heritage with future developments in a clear and coherent manner.

Integrating Public Facilities

Additionally, there is the question of how to integrate a major public facility within an established suburban urban fabric, ensuring that the new functions remain compatible with the surrounding environment and maintain harmony with the existing neighborhood.

Challenges of Redeveloping the “Cité de l’Aurore” Site

The redevelopment of this site raises a series of major urban challenges, requiring a delicate balance between preserving the existing urban heritage and introducing sustainable future solutions.

Maintaining the Visual Openness of Rue de l’Aurore

One of the key challenges is how to maintain the continuity of Rue de l’Aurore while preserving its distinctive character, particularly the visual openness toward the tree-covered backdrop, which is a fundamental element of the pedestrian experience and the environmental quality of the neighborhood.

Establishing a New Urban Sequence

Another question concerns how to create a new urban sequence that paves the way for future residential projects in the southern part of the site. This requires flexible planning that connects the existing structures with new developments in a smooth and organized manner.

Integrating a Major Public Facility

Finally, there is the challenge of integrating a major public facility within an already established suburban urban fabric, ensuring that the new functions remain compatible with the surrounding environment while maintaining the visual and social harmony of the neighborhood.

Building Design and Visual Openness

The building extends along the project site while maintaining visual openness toward the wooded area to the west, which remains visible from Rue de l’Aurore. This approach reflects the designers’ focus on creating a visual connection between the building and its natural surroundings, enhancing the user experience and providing a more comfortable learning environment.

Gable and Front Courtyard

The gabled side of the building faces the street, defining and visually framing the school’s front courtyard. This architectural strategy helps create a clear and distinctive entrance, adds an aesthetic dimension to the facade, and improves interaction between the school and the urban environment.

Geographical Orientation of the Building

Thanks to the building’s northeast-to-southwest orientation, the facades benefit optimally from southern exposure. This orientation allows school classrooms to have direct access to outdoor spaces, supporting educational activities and maximizing natural light and ventilation, a fundamental element in sustainable educational design.

Upper Walkways and Protrusions: Dual Functions

The upper walkways and external protrusions serve as sun-shading elements while simultaneously extending the classrooms outward, enhancing the connection between indoor and outdoor spaces. Additionally, these structures function as secondary external circulation paths, helping to reduce pressure on internal movement within the building, thereby improving the daily navigation experience for both students and teachers.

Educational Garden: Functional Separation and Visual Calm

The northern part of the site has been designed as an educational garden, acting as a tranquil buffer zone between the adjacent residential area and the school building. This garden also provides views of the quietest facade of the building, enhancing the learning environment and offering spaces for interaction with nature and relaxation away from the bustle of daily activities.

Integrated Design: Efficient Organization and Outdoor Connections

The project’s integrated design highlights the planners’ ability to provide a clear and efficient organization of the school’s various spaces, facilitating movement and interaction between classrooms and administrative facilities. This design also strengthens the connection with the densely landscaped outdoor courtyards, creating a comprehensive learning environment that combines indoor activities with natural experiences, reflecting a strong focus on both visual and functional quality of the site.

Simplicity and Organization in Interior Design

The building reflects simplicity and internal organization through its timber structure, which serves as a fundamental element of the project’s architectural character. This structure contributes to a warm and flexible atmosphere while maintaining the strength and durability required for an educational building.

Northern Section and Ground Floor: Solid Foundation and Protected Functions

The northern part of the ground floor consists of what is known as the “concrete table,” made of in-situ poured slabs and insulated precast walls. This area houses service spaces and rooms requiring high sound insulation, reflecting the designers’ attention to providing a quiet and functional learning environment.

Timber Structures and Upper Floor: Continuity and Visual Support

The half-timber structures are anchored on this foundation, supporting a mixed wood-and-concrete roof. On the upper floor, the timber frames extend following the grid of the ground floor, forming the complete upper mass of the building, enhancing visual harmony and creating a balance between rigidity and flexibility in the design.

Use of Natural Materials in Insulation

The timber structure of the building benefits from bio-based insulation materials such as wood wool, hemp, and recycled fabrics, reflecting the design’s commitment to environmental sustainability and improving the building’s thermal efficiency. The structure is clad with treated and stained larch panels, providing additional protection against weather conditions while maintaining the building’s natural aesthetic character.

Windows and Visual Harmony

The oak–aluminum composite windows follow the building’s structural rhythm, ensuring complete visual harmony with the material palette used in the design. This choice reinforces the building’s architectural identity, balancing durability and aesthetics while facilitating a natural visual connection between the interior and exterior spaces.

✦ ArchUp Editorial Insight

It can be observed that the design of the Jules Verne School Complex clearly reflects an effort to organize educational spaces and connect them with the surrounding urban context, while taking into account visual openness and the building’s orientation to maximize natural light and ventilation. Elements such as the upper walkways, protrusions, and the educational garden demonstrate attention to the connection between indoor and outdoor spaces, which can enhance the daily user experience for students and teachers.

However, the project still poses several challenges and considerations when viewed from the perspective of sustainable architecture and daily circulation management. For example, the distribution of spaces among different classrooms may require reassessment to ensure greater flexibility in response to changing future needs, particularly with the anticipated expansion in the southern part of the site. Moreover, the visual harmony of the building with the existing urban environment is only partially achieved and may not be sufficient to provide a fully integrated urban experience encompassing all building facades and surrounding courtyards.

From a broader perspective, the project can serve as a reference for integrating educational spaces with the natural environment, while necessitating a review of the connections between the building and the urban context and reconsidering how educational buildings adapt to evolving societal and modern school requirements. Overall, the project offers an opportunity to study the relationship between internal organization of educational spaces and interaction with the urban context, but it also highlights that achieving a balance between functionality and environmental harmony remains an ongoing challenge in projects of this kind.

Prepared by the ArchUp Editorial Team

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