L'école Village

TEAM PORTRAIT

VIDEO (by the team)

INTERVIEW
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1. How did you form the team for the competition?
The team was formed through geographical proximity, shared convictions and complementary contributions. Indeed, Edouard Cailliau and Thomas Lecourt (Studio Rijsel) have a production attached to the peri-urbanity and rurality of the Hauts-de-France, in particular by understanding the territory and the landscape. Nathan Henon-Hilaire, architect, and Romain Aubin, landscape designer, defended a joint diploma at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure d'Architecture et de Paysage de Lille on the town of Wallers-Arenberg. The sharing of positions and convictions brought together by an understanding of the different scales has thus enabled them to envisage the Europan 16 adventure together.

2. How do you define the main issue of your project, and how did you answer on this session main topic, Living cities?
Attached to an approach anchored in reality, we wanted to give concrete expression to the notion of a living city. Thus, we decided to focus solely on the Arenberg site. This pragmatic positioning enabled us to develop a detailed knowledge of this territory, to understand the issues at stake, and the courses of action to be implemented to develop a living city. The pavement of the Arenberg’s Trench is a remarkable and influent aspect, with a strong identity and an important materiality. It’s the point of origin and the start of the development of Arenberg. Its linear buildout, alongside a forest and cultivated plains, weaves a thread supporting several uses. It’s the starting point of the living town in its linearity and in its width. These successive places form an « already there » heritage, waiting to be revealed, as much as for the local inhabitants (the true actors of this town), as it is for the passers-by engaged to other exceptional activities (Creative Mine, Paris-Roubaix, …). This interweaving of scales creates a fruitful breeding ground for the development of the community. On this « thread », the school acquires a particular potential. With its central position, it benefits from a link with the Parc du Bosquet, a true natural heritage for the village. Considering this, the school naturally becomes the support for the history to come. Far from a facility closed in itself, we see the school of tomorrow as place to develop the interaction and the life within the community. It’s a school for and by the village. This school is multifaceted, living and ever-evolving. It’s a vector for the development of future inhabitants; it’s a place of possibilities: that of the interactions with this group of actors in the town.