The Garden of the Ecole Normale Supérieure
Construction of the New Ecole Normale Supérieure in the Moulon Business Park, Gif sur Yvette (91)
Client: Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Cachan
Team: Renzo Piano Building Workshop, architectes (mandataire) – Après la pluie, paysagistes et Pascal Cribier – Claude Guiaudeau, ingénieur horticole – AIA, Bureau d’Etude Technique VRD – groupe 6 – Sletec – CICAD consultants – Agence Franck Boutté Consultants – Cosil Peutz lightning desing – RFR, façades – Labeyrie associés – L’autobus impérial
Mission: Maîtrise d’œuvre complète
Progress: Etudes
Delivery Date: 2018
Area: 30 000 m2 /12.000 m2 (jardin)
Cost: 145 000 000 € /5.000.000 € (jardin)
The Ecole Normale Supérieure in Cachan is joining the French grandes écoles on the Saclay plateau in the framework of the project of the grand Paris resulting in a new centrality in the geographic and strategic positioning of research and development in Ile de France.
Sheltered from the winds on the plateau and inside the area formed by the buildings, this garden affords all the ingredients necessary for a moment of calm, charm and poetry.
Like the school, this garden is open and accessible, a convivial location to meet up, do research, mingle, and experiment.
The composition of the garden accompanies the distribution of functions in the buiding. The main forecourt and the grand canal in the garden highlight the science gallery to the north. It welcomes the important moments in the life of the school: festivities such as exhibitions and student gatherings.
At the foot of the facades, functional circulation serves each of the school buildings and acts as a transition to the garden. At the same time, it allows going around the garden and getting an outside view without crossing a wide edge.
In the heart of the garden will be plants that come from research that will be staged and a collection of cultivars, showing their particularities.
The polychrome garden offers surprising and rich ambiences that can be discovered day by day, season after season, year after year.
Photo credit : Michel Denancé