WORL ARCHITECTURE

THREE-PART HARMONY

It is a somewhat surreal experience to visit a French, Catholic private school that lies in sight of the east end of Chartres cathedral and find yourself in art impeccably neo-modernist concrete and glazed corridor. It is hue that regional institutions in France embrace modernity much more readily than in other parts of the world, but In Chartres, with its ecclesiastical heritage and largely agricultural economy, the cards are generally stacked against progressive architectural solutions, and particularly those that explore such notions as dematerialization end "the void".

The Chartres-based team of Sophie Berthelier Philippe Fichet and Benoit Tribouillet race begun to gain notoriety on the Continent for their exacting, minimalist creations. They have, thus far, worked on relatively low -profile projects, and yet this has also been part of their appeal, because they have consistently demonstrated how highly poetic and progressive ideas can he integrated into the more ordinary corners of urban space, The Lycée Notre-Dame, situated within a kilometer of the team’s office, is a prime example of how the kind of styling we are used to seeing in the metropolitan projects of the likes of Perrault and Nouvel can be applied to the needs of a distinctly localised community.

Of particular note among the team's other completed works are an Information Center (1998) and an extension to the Rémi Belleau College in Nogent-le-rotrou (1996). In Nogent, The team worked with one of Ove Arup's engineer, Paul Nuttall, to create a seemingly weightless facade of projected brises-soleil in a volumetric scheme reminiscent of the sculpture of Donald Judd and Carl Andre. But whereas that extension stands off against a Corbusier-influenced college campus of the late 1960s, in Chartres the spatial context is defined by the view of the cathedral to the west and a set of prefabricated huts to the east so no less than the most extreme contrast the built environment of western civilization has to offer.

Urbanism, in its broadest sense, is at the root of the practice's work. Its buildings are a genuine expression of the spaces that surround them. Site, as defined by the Notre Dame school, is not simply a static set of landmarks and materials relations, but is also a fluid space of movement and vision: the prefabricated huts, a line of poplar trees, Chartres cathedral, a line on the grass made by the annual passage of students’ feet; this school is the product of both the edifice and the interstice.

Much attention is also afforded to what could be called the "poetry of materials"; the assemblage and association of elemental components. In this respect, the work of Rem Koolhas is influential, but his lessons are applied by the Chartres team with a greater degree of site specificity and sense of place, in the true spirit of minimalism, Philippe Fichet points out that the old prefabs will not pass into history without having first played their part in the complex aesthetic equations that have formed the new building. "Banal industrial constructions can became beautiful when the budget requires that all decorative features are eliminated", he says.

The site's line of giant poplar trees has defined the north-south axis of the principal classroom and administrative block. This was completed in 1997. The site has recently undergone a second phase of development in the form of a new canteen, positioned a short distance to the north-west. Unlike the exterior of the earlier buildings, the canteen displays an explicit reference to the cathedral. Its stainless-steel grid structure supports blue glazing, adopting, in deadpan fashion, the blue Theme in the cathedral's stained glass.

The main school essentially consists of three units of identical dimensions, linked on the first floor by a single circulatory corridor that runs the entire length of the complex on the west side. Two interval spaces, piercing through the complex at ground level, allow for convenience of movement between the old prefabs and the sports field in front of the new school, and maintain aspects of the cathedral view for inhabitants of a development of town villas further to the east. From those positions, the eastern and, ostensibly, rear facade of the school, introduces a geometric rhythm and a series of frames for the cathedral vista. It consists of a roughcast concrete curtain wall supporting a sheer surface of gIass panels, ranging from transparent, to sand-treated semi transparent to ceramic white-opaque, arranged in a scheme that draws on the art of De Stijl : Lissitzky, Mondrian, van Doesburg.

The facade that fronts on to the view of the cathedral is transparency itself, it reveals a cross-section through the institution, showing not only its circulatory corridor and all the school's classroom doors, but also its concrete superstructure and its principal service duct with its internal piping. In short, Iike a cross-section drawing, the western facade displays a full inventory of the school's structural and functional characteristics. This degree of transparency is enabled by an unusual sun-filtering product of German origin. Three projected brise-soleil bays screen the facade with a stainless-steel mesh material, which reflects light by a factor of approximately 40%.

One could say that the lightly veiled "nudity" of this facade stages a dematerialisation of the building in the face of the unshakeable confidence of the nearby historical monument Certainly, there is a sense of humility in this semi-permeable, terrain-hugging form. However, its humility is actually grounded in an ancient, functional architectural typology, itself of ecclesiastical origin. In its conceptual scheme, the canopied and corridor space of the western facade revives elements of that multi-functional, ambulatory space of monastic life : the cloister.

An in-house graphics team, Béatrice Fichet and Valérie Popot, have designed the signage for the school. As with projects elsewhere, the typographic scheme takes up the "tectonic narrative" of the building as a whole. Two continuous bands of typography run the length of the corridors on both levels, stenciled in orange and red paint on to the outer surfaces of the concrete classroom walls There is a kinetic aspect to this design. The line of letters moves alternately from fully legible labels on the classroom doors ("chemistry", "biology" ...), to partial fragmentation on the wall surfaces near the doors, to full-blown abstraction around the midpoint between them.

Another feature of this severe, communicating surface is a sequence of rectangular slices of mirror glass, positioned both vertically and horizontally and embedded to lie flush with the surface of the concrete. These are not positioned for users of the corridor, but are placed to enable this tertiary layer of the facade to register from a distance. Looking back on the school, light reflecting on the mirrors locates the inner concrete skin in depth behind the brise-soleil and the glazing. This shifting play between layers is again air effect that infers a kinetic viewer, a modulating geometry that reveals itself to the eye in movement.

From le Corbusier to Orson Welles, modernists have identified the interior of Chartres cathedral as a touchstone for an authentic moment of transcendence within architecture. The Lycée Notre Dame, with its subtle transactions between vision and visibility, and its meditative association of light, geometry and raw materials, is another homage of this nature. It discretely orders its surrounding terrain in the manner of a monastic outbuilding, providing a neutral site for a place of learning, while, at the same moment, banishing all thoughts of conservatism to the crypt.