Raymond Poincaré School Extension

At the heart of a neighborhood blending single-family houses, apartment buildings, and sports facilities, the Raymond-Poincaré elementary school is preparing to undergo a major transformation.

Built in the late 1930s, expanded in stages but now constrained in its operation, it must respond to the city's demographic growth and new educational practices. The municipality is therefore undertaking an ambitious project: to extend the school, improve its energy performance and completely rethink its living spaces.

The site, organized around an iconic symmetrical building, suffers from a lack of legibility, a mineral courtyard that has become a heat island, and a scattering of key spaces (covered playground, cafeteria, multipurpose hall). The project proposes to restore overall coherence by creating a new centrality: a unifying covered playground, the true heart of the school complex, from which the leisure center, multipurpose hall, classrooms, and school cafeteria are articulated. The main entrance is repositioned on rue Gabriel-Péri, providing a clear, accessible entrance visible from the public space.

The extension, positioned in an L-shape along the route de Saint-Denis, creates a new built frontage that reinforces the school's presence in the urban landscape. It wraps around the courtyard, redesigned to accommodate more nature, coolness and biodiversity. The staff housing is relocated away from school circulation, with an independent access.

Architecturally, the project emphasizes sobriety and durability: simple volumes, controlled transparencies, long-lasting and bio-sourced materials. The facades are clad with an insulating layer of wood fiber and a red brick facing, echoing the existing building. The whole aims to meet RE2020 requirements, with particular attention paid to summer comfort, air quality and the reduction of energy consumption.

The technical choices—dual-flow ventilation, solar shading, rational stormwater management, high-performance heating—support this commitment to creating an exemplary facility, adapted to climate challenges and children's well-being.

In sum, the restructuring of the Raymond‑Poincaré school is not limited to an extension: it redefines a place of learning, meeting and breathing for students, teachers and families, while reinscribing the establishment in its neighborhood with a renewed identity open to the future.