ESCP Business School in Paris by AS Architecture-Studio

Completed last month, the ESCP Business School (formerly Novancia) will welcome nearly 1,500 students in Paris at the start of the next academic year. Designed by Architecture-Studio, the practice behind the European Parliament and the future media library in Saint-Malo, the school stands on rue Armand Moisant in the 15th arrondissement, close to Gare Montparnasse. It houses classrooms, offices, three lecture theatres, a resource centre, a recording studio, catering areas and a 260-seat auditorium. A 94-space car park occupies the two basement levels.

The ESCP Business School building stands out for the cheerfulness with which it responds to its surroundings. The site is in fact an assembly of 23 plots, and the architects chose to keep the 1908 building. Their extension picks up the alignment of the neighbouring Haussmann-style buildings in the same yellow. Beyond the fold at the junction, the façade curves round to face the Musée Bourdelle, turning red to frame the courtyard. The practice designed recessed joints to separate the renovated buildings from the extension. The existing buildings have been refurbished to restore their original appearance, and the traces of the 1954 extensions have been removed.

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The extension contrasts with the treatment of the original building's façade: the roughness of the brick gives way to the softness of this palette. Depending on where the visitor stands and the moment of observation, the colour of the façade shifts from pastel to fluorescent. Users also play a part in the life of the building: the glass louvres, translucent up close and opaque from a distance, pivot on a vertical axis, letting in the sun in winter and shielding the interior from it in summer. The screen-printing and the colour scheme derive from a mathematical equation. Seven colours, four patterns, front and back, and seven different heights produce 873 references for 4,102 elements installed.

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Inside, an atrium serves all the rooms of both the extension and the existing building, horizontally via walkways and vertically via the lift and the imposing staircase at the centre of the foyer. A large roof lets in soft light. The shape of the atrium follows that of the building. The meeting space is planted with bamboo.

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A timber shell enclosing the auditorium makes it legible within the school. The entrance through the 1908 building has been retained, the mosaics have been restored, as have the decorations of the decorator's office. Visitors then enter the atrium, where a large opening faces them and looks onto the courtyard. The teaching rooms are mostly on the rue Armand Moisant side.

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Regular readers will have understood by now that the cleanest energy is the energy we do not consume, and this project is once again a case in point. Its roof is made of ETFE, a flexible, inflatable material into which air is injected, providing excellent thermal and acoustic insulation.

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Air is renewed by a ventilation system with heat recovery. The atrium acts as a buffer space, both thermally and acoustically. Fluorescent lighting with presence detectors and dimming is installed in the classrooms, offices and circulation areas, while the computer rooms have low-luminance lighting. It is worth noting that this is the first public building to comply with the new accessibility standard for people with disabilities.

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“The project is a major one: educational (training entrepreneurs), economic (densifying the network of businesses in the Paris region), scientific (advancing knowledge of entrepreneurship), cultural (developing an entrepreneurial culture among young people and adults alike), and social (opening up to as many people as possible, notably through apprenticeships, the possibility of fulfilling oneself as an entrepreneur),” says Anne Stéfanini, Director of the school. “A project on this scale needed a place, walls, a look that conveys the originality of the school's positioning. It is thanks to the support and commitment of the Région Île-de-France, which I thank warmly, that this project has been able to see the light of day.”