New Entry of High School of Engineering and Management

The strategy of the architects Aouabed & Figuccio to build a single wall as an architectural synthesis to create a visual identity and reconfigure the public spaces of the school. The project proposes to use an architectural sculpture to create the main entrance of the school, which so far is not identifiable. The objectives are as follows:

– Establish a main pedestrian entrance to the school, clearly identifiable
– Activate the unused terraces of the school to integrate them into the entrance route.
– Integrate signage that is visible from public space
– Reflect the particular questions taught within the school, through the choices of materialization
– Create a unique meeting place, a spatial sequence allowing users to meet and meet there.

By extending the curve of the existing building, the intervention generates both an entrance pavilion in the axis leading to the main courtyard of the school, an outdoor foyer for the Aula, as well as a monumental façade, which delimits clearly the school grounds and asserts its identity.

The system is functional because it makes it possible to enhance unused terraces to qualitatively change their status and create new routes. The wall is made of concrete poured on-site, like the existing building. The upper part is made up of a multitude of caissons or material pixels, which refer to the structure of the building and allow HEIG-VD to be registered using stained glass. On the other hand, the curve and the shape of the boxes refer to one of the oldest uses of concrete from Roman antiquity, and thus directly addresses one of the research activities within the school.

Opposite the front door is the ideal vantage point for reading the anamorphosis, a blue disc framed in the square door. This form visible from a single point of view, replay the architectural gesture of the entrance, which extends the circle of the Aula. This sculpture/painting uses perspective and fragments according to the movement of the user, offering the entrance space a possibility of somewhere else.

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