School master abroad - school, Saint Ouen, Paris, France

Architectural Review, The, April, 1995 by Peter Davey

Lucien Kroll's libertarian approach to organisational structure and form has often been analysed in these pages. Here, he tackles a dreary school in a grey Paris suburb and attempts to make it into a net of places.

Saint-Ouen is one of those rather dreary and run-down suburbs on the north edge of Paris that seem to exist so that the city proper can glitter and shine with style and luxury. One of the aims of the competition for adding to and rehabilitating the Jules Michelet college of secondary education in the rue du docteur Bauer was to give a focus and some sense of new life to the south of the area.

Lucien Kroll, who won the competition, was clear that little could be done with the heavy and stolid structure of the two wings that formed the original school. His aim was to 'give personality to the places', to 'poetiser les espaces'. His strategy has therefore been to modify the existing work largely by hanging things on it and to concentrate new functions (laboratories, workshops and so on) in the new wing to the east of the site.

The block on rue du docteur Bauer is now mainly devoted to administration, but the original hall (which Kroll thought too long) has been cut down, given a little stage and is now a multi-purpose space for the school and the whole community. It can be opened separately at night, though it is reached through the school's remarkable front door. To try to ameliorate the lumpen utilitarianism of the original building, Kroll has clad part of the street facade in that most banal of materials: mirror glass. Here the unbreakable glass is blue and certainly serves to emphasise the entrance and to animate the facade, for it reflects and transforms the movements of the street, but the material has such connotations of second-rate commercial buildings that I found it hard to think of its use as a gesture of welcome. But once past the mirror glass, all becomes much more kindly and generous.

The reception desk curves to sweep you towards either the hall to the right or forwards to the new glass arcade that lines the side of the old school courtyard with its fine trees. Kroll has long been fascinated by Guimard's delicate and welcoming use of glass and metal - for instance he made memorable use of frilly glass canopies at the Alma station (AR October 1981). At the Jules Michelet school, Kroll has brought his command of glass and metal to new levels of delight. The canopy edge undulates against the trees of the court and the ribs striate the glass in a series of rhythms that for once make the description of architecture as frozen music seem apposite.

Towards the east end of the court, the arts tower suddenly bursts through the canopy. Clad in cedar shingles, the tower is the most dramatic element in the whole composition. It stands rough and irregular in almost violent contrast to the delicacy of the canopy that surrounds it, and to the smooth white rendered forms and stainless steel roofs of the science block beyond. Its ground floor is a store, above which is the teachers' common room (Kroll may be a libertarian, but he is not devoid of sense, and the teachers' windows command panoramic views of the play courts).

Over the teachers is the design studio, and above that a little concert hall, the irregular plan and section of which do much to give the tower its shape and presence. On top of the whole lot is a roof garden (inaccessible but watered automatically). This garden, and others which are incorporated elsewhere in the scheme, have a special meaning for Kroll, who suggests that their untamed and untended growth in a land of gardeners devoted to clipping and pleaching will offer some sense of freedom and individuality.

Throughout, Kroll's intention has been to avoid 'l'anesthesie, l'indifference, la raideur officiefle'. He succeeds triumphantly by creating a complex three dimensional web of interacting events. They are sometimes expressed as major themes like the smooth polished feel of the science block and the rough, woody texture of the arts tower. But they are often apparently haphazard happenings like the glassy first floor link between the old building and the new block, or the succession of levels which falls down from the treed playground to the intimate court outside the dining area.

This remarkable series of moves, both obvious and subtle, makes the school a place which can never be forgotten. Only time will tell whether its teachers have the imagination and ability to play on the redoubtable instrument they have been given.