The building is located at the heart of the Bastide Niel, a developing urban area designed by the MVRDV agency. The urbanistic regulations impose complex volumetrics with multiple slopes and a single mineral coating for the facades and roof.
The parcel is limited to the Niel barracks within its walls, with no associated floor space. The architecture is built inside and on top of the existing building, to transform this 19th-century barracks into a teaching facility. To create a building with no external surface is to create an endogenous architecture, offering outdoor spaces to the users within the building. The 5th floor features a terrace with a panoramic view over Bordeaux, providing a space for outdoor socializing.
The project consists of removing the roof, interior walls and floors of the former recreational facility for the officers of the NIEL barracks, leaving only the peripheral walls from the ground to the cornice, and constructing a seven-story building within the shell thus created. The ancient walls are detached from the new structure and the historic and contemporary facades remain independent, autonomous structures.
The combination of the rigorous historic base and the evanescent new construction gives this architecture its singularity. The walls, roof and, as an extension, all the other opaque parts of the new construction emerging from the original walls are coated with off-white composite stone plates. This mineral skin is woven with glass facets serving as brise soleil, with three qualities of glass chosen for their transparency and reflective properties.
As the building is designed to evolve over time, a post-and-beam construction system with light partitioning was chosen to enable the interior layouts to be reconfigured. The construction is earthquake resistant, certified HQE level very good, and BREEAM level Good, with electricity production by white photovoltaic panels integrated into the roofs that form a full-fledged facade.