Photo credits © Roland Halbe
In times when architectural productions tend to insidiously all look alike, ignoring cultural, historical or social particularism, whilst the everyday architectural practice struggles with standards imposed by industrials or politics, and that buildings are dropped indifferently around the globe, schools seem to be the last guarantees of a possible diversity of thoughts, positions and actions.
The objective of this new architecture school is to develop an innovative European training dedicated to the architecture for the XXIst century, based on a radical and progressive way of research, experimentation and transversality.
In terms of architecture, one of the major stakes is to train architects that will be deeply anchored in the contemporary world – a world that is more and more difficult to apprehend, in which keys of comprehension are trapped in a range of multiple virtual and trans-disciplinary connexions.
The goal is to train architects able to handle with agility the multitude of necessary knowledge, able to work collaboratively, able to apprehend local and global techniques. In the heart of the new Confluence in Lyon, the School has the ambition to become one of the lead- ers of the eld strength of the area, as much by its singular program as by its architectural identity. The major part of the old market was destroyed to create this new area but few bays remained and it is within 6 of them that the School was settled, rue Paul Montrochet.
At the same time new and part of a past that embodies rebirth, the reuses of those bays is again a way to anchor the school in the concrete reality of its environment. The 6 bays of the old market are left as raw as possible and symbolize a new written page in the story of these premises.