Schools of architecture made by architects aren’t appreciated and the ones who had invest old buildings are more interesting. Where the architect acts, sadness lives. “Exploring the end of architecture” is a building with a minimum of architecture, a building where the different forms of living were possible, where you can find different ways of using it. Every student would invents ways of inhabiting the architecture that haven’t been thought or predict. A building, where the users are actors, and do not undergo the system of the architecture. A building where architecture is a support of life. A building where the students will learn how to make architecture.
The building is a three dimensional grid, a basic architecture of columns and beams. Each level is almost the same, but they differ all a little bit. Similar so that activities could happen anywhere. And different so that activities could find a certain place belong the specific qualities. Following the Cedric Price’s three storey sandwich, the levels are already different by the fact that some of them are next to the ground, others are next to the sky, and some in the middle.
The repartition of the program follows simplicity and logic. The public faculty and conference halls are related to the ground. The studio space, faculty laboratory, educational space are stacked together in the middle of the building. The office spaces are between the public facilities and the studio and educational spaces. above the office space. The library is at the top of the building, next to the sky, and offers the best view on the landscape.
The similarity between levels, beams and columns avoid a relation of specificity, allowing activities to move in the building. It invites to personal appropriation. The architecture of the school is a support for life. It disappears to give face to the users.
The abstract grid is a framework of prefabricated beams and columns in metal and concrete. The junction of the elements are linked by the metal assemblage. Fluids pass into technical floor. The facade is design with a permanent module of 65 cm. A detail reduce the 90 cm slab as to a 65 cm horizontal beam representation. The beams and columns are cover on the facade with white enameled steel modules.
The resemblance between all places ask the question : why does an activity have to be in this place or an other? The activity can be what ever it wants. Only small particularities suggest ways of using the building. This is the difference : suggest rather than impose.