The Palace

Offices + Equipment

The Palace

Le Palace - Saint-Etienne 42

Project managementJean Monnet University
Surface14 000 m2
Cost17 700 000 € EXCL. TAX
Project managementAssociate Architects: A-Mas

Restructuring of the Tréfilerie campus of the Jean Monnet University in Saint-Etienne (42)

Our job is to answer the question put to us, that is the least we can do, but if the answer is no more than that, what good are we doing? We are, in fact, hunters of possibilities and we are constantly suggesting ways in which each project can evolve, how the city can evolve, how the program can add new features, we are looking for the accident, the X factor, it is in fact the unexpected that allows life on earth to appear, it is for us a way to let everyone's imagination slip into the interstices of the project.

DEPTH OF FIELD The last of the architect's freedoms is this one. He has to be a hunter of the unexpected, a finder of accidents, an adventurer of imagination and daydreaming.

THE FIELD OF POSSIBLES
The form is powerful, it is evident in its simplicity and radicality. It could have always been there as a survivor's hall that changed the scale of a whole neighbourhood. It displays this ambition. It is thus the heir to the great industrial or market garden halls that marked the apogee of steel or concrete techniques. Our wooden hall can become the spearhead of a clear desire to build with bio-sourced materials. No formal or ostentatious gesticulation, only real and beautiful. The form is pure, its covering will be unitary, will change and calm, it is a roof that protects and brings people together. It beats to the rhythm of those who walk through it, of those who stop there.
It is large, immense, secret and mysterious because it is the right measure necessary to protect our imagination today.
For if architecture is well designed to last, we now know that changes are taking place at an accelerated pace. Thinking about the deconstruction of what we produce is the same responsibility as sorting our household waste. Through the choice of the wooden structure, we asked ourselves: how do we dismantle, how do we recycle, and tried to provide responsible and ethical answers, while being extremely stimulating on the creative level.