Lab City CentraleSupélec, Gif-sur-Yvette (project stage)
OMA - Office for Metropolitan Architecture- Typologies Education University
- Date 2012
- City Gif-sur-Yvette
- Country France
Located on the outskirts of the French capital, the École Centrale Paris is one of the oldest and most prestigious engineering schools in the country. Within an internal restructuring program, the school called a competition in 2012 to build a new school in the Parisian suburb of Saclay. Under the concept of ‘Lab City,’ the project departs from the typical plan for research and education buildings, designed as linear structures divided by endless corridors because of the restrictive isolation conditions required for laboratories. Instead of huge and extremely isolated facilities, the project divides the program into departments and distributes them in the small parcels of an open plan grid, like a city with streets and buildings of friendly scale. This model guarantees independence between the parts, favoring flexibility in the long run. The urban scale is thus transferred to the campus, with a main street cutting diagonally across the Lab City, providing a convenient public route between the campus and the subway station, from which secondary streets branch out. A lightweight and translucid roof covers the entire complex and creates a strong link between the different buildings.
Client
École Centrale Paris
Architect
OMA. Partner-in-charge: Rem Koolhaas. Director: Ellen van Loon
Competition phase
Clément Blanchet, Alicia Casals, Didzis Jaunzems, Eugenio Cardoso, Felicity Cardoso, Fred Awty, Helena Hiriart, Ida Stople, Li Huang, Maria Aller Rey, Phil Handley, Pierre-Jean Le Maitre, Sang Woo Kim
ESQ phase
Project leaders: Clément Blanchet, Edouard Pervès. Project team: Maria Aller Rey, Gabriella Bandeira, Eugenio Cardoso, Alban Denic, Cristina Martin de Juan, Pedro Pitarch Alonso, Ana Rubin, Saul Smeding
APS phase
Project leaders: Clément Blanchet, Edouard Pervès. Project team: Maria Aller Rey, Tolis Apostolis, Matthieu Boustany, Lourdes Carretero Botran, Gilles Guyot, Christopher Hayman, Sang Woo Kim, Min Hong Khor, Cristina Martin de Juan, John Paul Pacelli, Kristin Schaefer, Lingxiao Zhang
APD phase
Project leaders: Clément Blanchet, Edouard Pervès. Project team: Maria Aller Rey, Anton Anikeev, Jonathan Bourhis, Tolis Apostolis, Cristina Martin de Juan, Elida Mosquera Martinez, Edmondo Occhipinti, Marcus Parviainen, Timur Shabarev, Saskia Simon
PRO phase
Project leaders: Edouard Pervès. Project team: Paloma Bule, Aleksandar Joksimovic, Lina Kwon, Pierre-Jean Le Maître, Cristina Martin de Juan, Ioana Mititelu, Elida Mosquera Martinez, Marcus Parviainen, Timur Shabarev, Saskia Simon. Architectural Support: Clément Blanchet Architecture
Collaborators
Landscape: D’Ici Là. Engineers: Bollinger Grohmann, Alto, Brian Cody. Consultants: Apex, DAL, Ducks, Cuisine et Concept. Model: Vincent de Rijk. Photos: Frans Parthesius. Imagery: Artefactory
Budget
€ 96 million
Program
33,000 m²
