Renoir Rostand Colleges

Offices + Equipment

Renoir Rostand Colleges

Renoir and Rostand Colleges - MARSEILLE 13

Construction of 2 secondary schools with common areas in the northern districts of Marseille.

Project managementBouches-du-Rhône County Council
Surface17 000 m2
Cost 10 000 000 € EXCL. TAX
Project managementLead Architect: Caractére spécial
BET Structure: Struct.ing
BET Fluids: SARLEC
Landscape: J. MAZAS
Date1995-1998
MissionComplete
Photographic CreditsPhilippe RUAULT

BACKGROUND
The reconstruction of these two colleges in twinned and simultaneous in the framework of the operation CONCERTO, upgrading of the real estate stock of the colleges of the department.
Their planned location is on the side of the Saint Just hill, near Le Merlan.
The land is very wooded, with beautiful and large trees, total built area SHON for the two colleges 12,600 m².

EXTRACT FROM THE BOOK " BEFORE AFTER, ARCHITECTURES AU FILPS DU TEMPS "
ed. Actes SUD

" These colleges give an anchor point to the district and, from there, metamorphose it. It's a real miracle. This double college is not brutal, it is volcanic. Its authenticity contaminates its environment, it is no longer erratic since it has found its anchor point with it. I am amazed every time I go back there. This rusty cliff, these two blades that straddle it, these metal stairs that climb them like parasitic plants, these bamboos that make façades vibrate. Everything is right and resonates on the bars and towers that surround them. A beautiful turnaround "

Patrice GOULET.

EXTRACT FROM A SPEECH BY PAUL VIRILIO, AT A CONFERENCE IN PARIS "Usually, architecture magazines fall out of my hands because it's always the same: plan, section, facade, plan, section, facade ... the photo. And there, by its force and brutality, it attracted me. So I found it quite interesting, because it is a project in situation, a project that is on the line between civil peace, and civil war.
Somewhere, the college is the crest line where things are decided, where it is integration into civilian life, where we are going to be massacred. It is possible wherever people are intolerant, sectarian, hateful, without character or temperament, wherever they are prepared to follow any slogan, it is possible.
I therefore thought it was bloody bloated to build the front line, the head line, that is to say, to demand education not in a cowardly way but in a very strong, very telluric way. It's a bit of a reconstituted level line that they would have made their front line; the front line in the good sense of the word.
I was also interested in the fact of a virtuoso tinkering between different materials, it's a recent achievement in our profession and it looks like armed earth. It reminds me of primitive architecture, that is to say primitive and not wild.
It's archaic architecture, that is to say something incipient.
What is primitivism?
It is what is born. It's not polished, cleaned, washed with the shine brush, it's alive! … »

Paul VIRILIO - September 1999.