The completion of a building in the planning project of Saclay, Paris is a unique opportunity for ECDM to design one of the markers of the future center of excellence established on the plateau. The uniqueness of the site, and it’s present and future characteristics, make it an interesting emerging area. The Campus EDF project is dense and compact, a volume which unifies a diversity of programs. The building is treated as a block framed by blocks of green, a building perfectly inscribed in a geometric landscape. More images and architects’ description after the break.
The landscape was the starting point of a project created with the idea of being surrounded by nature. The lack of construction dominates; the site is large, distended. The use of territory is essential here: to spread out would be to trivialize the landscape. Our first priority is to give value to the abundance of space. We also wanted to display the economy with which our building uses the territory, by proposing a compact architecture, a mass which seeks to use with moderation an area of great value. Here, wealth is space. We have therefore designed a project aware of its footprint, just as conscious of its siting as if it were in a rare and fragile environment. It is the landscape that unifies and saturates the architecture. We are dealing with a rural urbanity, with paradoxical planning that provides both the advantages of the city and the country in the same place.
