K Architectures

English description from designboom

ZIK, music school outside of the port town of granville, france.

inserted into a site characterized by rolling fields of wheat, the inter-municipal facility features a series of extending arms that slip into the terrain, purposely blurring its architecture with the land.

Retained to a single-storey, the verticial heights of the design responses to the needs of the building’s various programs. ranging from barn-like silhouettes to tall rectangular volumes, the overall form of the school adopts a dynamic and playful look. the finger-like wings which stretch out from the central axis features a sloped green roof which invites elements of the land onto itself, further diluting its presence in the rural setting. wrapped in pre-patinated copper panelling finished in a pastel blue-green, the facades are punctured with regular, vertical windows which enhances the interior with both natural daylighting and views of the surrounding fields.

hosting a number of different spaces for specific functions – individual rehearsal rooms, classrooms, percussion, jazz, chamber music and orchestral rehearsal rooms – the architects paid close attention to the acoustic requirements and sound characteristics of the facility. running along a central corridor, the spine-like circulation dictated the intuitive arrangement of the internal space.

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English description from ArchDaily
Located on the urban periphery of Granville, this musical school sits in a landscape that is both rural and urban. In this setting, the school brings together many of music schools that were scattered across several municipalities. Hidden by the terrain, the building borrows from the surrounding rural farms, barns, and small factories and translates them into a contemporary language. The details are simple and clean with a hint of rustication ie. the pre-patina copper green.
The building walks the line between being strong contemporary contrast to its surroundings and one that absolutely blends into the landscape. In this way you are simultaneously caught off guard and put at ease.
The architects from K-architectures say, “In a general way our works try to restore to architecture its narrative power. Each design corresponds to a story based on the encounter with a place, a site and a region. Our architecture is composed of stories and materials taken from or invented on site.”

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English description from A10

Music school, Granville

“Karine Herman and Jérôme Sigwalt of K-architectures seek to give architecture back its narrative power.(…)”

text: Xavier Gonzalez

Granville is a port in Lower Normandy, opposite St Malo, which was popular in the 19th century for its sea bathing and its casinos. Its beaches were also the scene of Allied landings in 1945 and its seafront still bears traces of that time, notably the many blockhouse remnants of the ‘Atlantic Wall’ built by the Germans.

The idea behind this new inter-municipal facility was to bring the teaching of music, previously scattered across several municipalities, together under one roof. This is no doubt the reason for the choice of an outof- town site on the Vaudroulin road, setting the music school amidst fields of wheat in a beautiful undulating landscape. The design sits sympathetically in its rural setting. It does not seek visibility or assert an architecture that might identify the facilities more clearly, rather it slips into the topography.

The comb-like geometric figure of the plan is confined to the ground floor. A central axis creates transparency and a central foyer that provides access to the various lateral sections of the building: the classrooms, the individual rehearsal rooms, the percussion, jazz, chamber music and orchestral rehearsal rooms.

The rooms vary in height according to their particular acoustic requirements or sound characteristics.

Externally, the building is clad on all sides with grey-green, pre-patinated copper panelling; a repetitive rhythm of identical vertical windows completes the composition. In a way, the aesthetic choice of copper is integral to the building’s blending with or dilution in its context and illustrates the enactment of a ‘drama of place’. The volumes, materials and arrangement within the landscape achieve a genuine harmony. Like sheds or farm extensions, the fragmented volumes of the music school are both subjects and objects in the fragile scenery of the rural landscape. But this contextual balance offers a double perception: a close reading and a distant vision.

In its use of greenish copper, k-architectures is employing the old technique of camouflage, which is intended to be viewed from a certain distance, whose main aim, to quote Paul Virilio, is ‘not so much identification as disintegration’. From afar the illusion is complete; these are silhouettes of an architecture at once iconic and ordinary. From close up, the project regains its autonomy, recovers its

texture and depth, but also its complexity and modernity. The layers and the texture of the copper become apparent and give the building a more precious feel.

The architects demonstrate that ‘blending in’ is not synonymous with pastiche or renunciation; however, these very ‘neo-rural’ silhouettes do create the impression of ‘already being there’. Yet, the disappearing act is feigned here; like a trompe l’oeil it is merely the illustration of a camouflage, of the maquillage, as

Baudelaire would say, that makes it possible ‘to create an abstract unity in the colour and texture of the skin’. The design carries a narrative – of a place and of an object that appears and disappears as if by magic.

There is something rather pleasant about contemplating this architecture which does not speak about architecture, or about space or form, but rather about the embodiment of transient and particularly scenic impressions.

Using materials that are sensitive to time and to the shifting light, the architects create stage sets and confer an atmosphere and a present meaning on what is perceived.

It evokes an immediate emotion, but this is a personal reading because it appeals to our sensitivity rather than our intellect.

K-architectures was the winner of Europan 4. Their project at Aubervillier, a commune in the northeastern suburbs of Paris, already established the architects’ desire penetrate the spirit of the place, to create an intimate relationship between a building and its context and narrative. Located beside a canal, their buildings resemble metal-clad warehouses highlighted by steel structures. ‘In a general way our works try to restore to architecture its narrative power. Each design corresponds to a story based on the encounter with a place, a site and a region. Our architecture is composed of stories and materials taken from or invented on site,’ according to the architects.

Each of their designs might well begin with ‘Once upon a time…’.