LFH _ LYCEE FRANCO – HELLENIQUE EUGENE DELACROIX- COMPETITION FOR A PRIMARY SCHOOL _ 2nd PRIZE, ATHENS, GREECE

Architecture: MICROMEGA in collaboration with Z - LEVEL

MICROMEGA TEAM: MARGARITA MICHA, NATALIA TSAKALAKI, GIORGOS LAZARIDIS, ANNA TSOKA, GIANNIS GEORGAKLIS.

Z-LEVEL TEAM: NAFSIKA PHILIPPOU, PENI STAMODIMOU, DESPINA SAOULIDOU

Structural Engineering: MARIA KAZAKOU

E/M Engineering: ENERTEK MEP CONSULTANTS

CLIENT: LYCEE FRANCO – HELLENIQUE EUGENE DELACROIX

The new French school in Athens is a large-scale project that our team studied from a global perspective, responding to questions of identity, feasibility and integration into contemporary construction issues. The new French school is designed to be inseparable from its natural surroundings, in symbolic, environmental and educational terms.

One of the first questions addressed during the design phase was what a French school in Greece is like today, what qualities of the Greek spirit are appreciated by the French and French speakers, and what they will experience differently in this host country. The answer lies in the role of open space and proximity to nature. Open space and outdoor living are important qualities in Greece: life in Greece takes place in the outdoors. The new primary school fits into the context of Pallini, a suburb with an agricultural history, a strong relationship with the Ymittos mountain, and areas that remain undeveloped.

The Mesogeia region, where we are based, has a tradition of growing wine, olives and farmland. This history is linked to a contemporary reality that makes it necessary to preserve natural areas, their biodiversity and their use. The new school responds to environmental challenges through construction and design choices that favour natural materials and the preservation of biodiversity, in a way that will be demonstrated on a daily basis by the students. Biodiverse walls, the use of materials with minimum borrowing, the creation of a low-energy building and the recovery of rainwater are just some of the practices used to create a natural school.

A key choice was to combine each enclosed space with an open space, so that students perceive their school as continuous with courtyards, gardens and vegetation. The presence of natural elements helps students to relax and contributes to their development. The small scale of the equipment (benches, etc.) favours the creation of social spaces that students can make their own. The playground is set in a natural environment that also allows contact with the ground. The feeling that the school is part of a vast ecosystem is amplified. Open spaces have a variety of qualities, from the ‘hardest’ to the ‘greenest’.

We favoured the creation of a built volume in the northern part of the site, in order to protect the courtyard areas from the prevailing winds. At the same time, we created a volume of buildings all along Rue Leontariou to the west, in order to block noise pollution and create a limit to the busiest part of the site. The distribution of the teaching units within this volume respected the connections and links required by the programme. The main entrance on rue Leontariou unites the forecourt, the reception hall and the interior garden, with a strong desire to create an emblematic space that gives visitors a first impression of grandeur and a feeling of openness for the children who pass through it every day. The reception hall distributes traffic between the administration, the nursery school and the primary schools, as well as the library. We chose to conform to the scale of buildings that prevails in Greece. We opted for a building on a human scale, divided into several volumes around the courtyard.