[ Laurens & Loustau Architectes ] Lycée de Jolimont

Architects: Laurens & Loustau Architects
Location: Toulouse (31), France
Project Team: Marc Laurens, Pierre Loustau
Client: S.A Cogemip, Région Midi-Pyrénées
Engineer: Ingénierie Studio
Project Area: 2,810 sqm
Project Year: 2002-2004
Photographs: Damien Aspe

All the area devoted to the pole of graphic arts at the Lycée Jolimont takes up a whole plot of land along an athletic track. The ground-floor,is dedicated to the organization ,a choice favorable to the current motion forward scheme of graphics idustries, which only leaves room, on the 1st floor, for the big art and design room, turned into a place propitious to inspiration. The presence on the pole premises of a vocational training center dedicated to printing crafts enjoying an entrance on the main street allowed us to design a great hall, as a meeting point at the crossroads of the teaching and  professional fields.

A vast and directional area, this place pays homage to the traditional typographical methods through big concrete letters emerging from the ground. There is no apparant facade front on the outside; one gets access to the great luminous volume of the hall through a passage behind a vast graphic section/ wall , with folded in and indented sides . Overhanging the wall, 23 paper hen sheds are scattered over the roofing. They are voluminous and by further concealing the facade, reinforce the idea of a cover ; In the evening light the building stands out: the black wall disappears and the lights illuminate the colored inner faces of the paper hen sheds.

from  archdaily