Architecture firm Coldefy, working in partnership with Relief Architecture, has successfully completed the Robert Badinter Secondary School, marking a significant milestone as the first timber-framed educational facility in northern France. The groundbreaking project, designed to serve 650 students, represents a major achievement in sustainable architecture and educational design.
The school is strategically positioned on a former railway yard site adjacent to the city's main train station and within easy walking distance of the town center. This location choice forms part of a comprehensive urban renewal initiative aimed at strengthening transportation connections and introducing new civic amenities to revitalize the surrounding area.
The construction site presented unique challenges, as it is located along the historic moat of the city's Vauban fortifications. Before construction could begin, engineers had to stabilize underground chalk quarries, known locally as catiches, which required extensive preparatory work to ensure the structural integrity of the foundation.
The architectural design centers around two primary building volumes that create a central courtyard featuring a playground, sports fields, and staff parking areas. The main teaching block faces the 19th-century train station and features a distinctive cantilevered timber porch that serves as a transitional element, guiding students from the public street into a protected educational environment. In a thoughtful gesture toward environmental preservation, architects incorporated a cut-out in the roof design to preserve an existing mature tree, effectively anchoring the building within its immediate natural context.
The main building runs parallel to a row of established mature trees, which helps reinforce the existing streetscape character. A secondary, lower structure houses the cafeteria and staff areas, positioned strategically behind landscaped green space to create a more intimate scale and connection to nature.
The architectural language deliberately references the site's industrial heritage, particularly through the main building's distinctive offset double-pitched roof design, which creates visual echoes of traditional railway halls. This design choice connects the new educational facility to the area's transportation history while establishing a contemporary architectural identity.
Inside the facility, classrooms and staff facilities are thoughtfully arranged around a dramatic double-height central hall. This space is illuminated by carefully positioned skylights that diffuse natural daylight into the circulation areas, creating a bright and welcoming environment for students and educators. The design includes an 80-seat Knowledge and Cultural Center that is accessible directly from the street, providing a valuable shared resource for both students and the broader local community.
The extensive use of timber throughout the interior spaces contributes to the project's material consistency and aligns perfectly with the structural timber framing system. This approach creates a calm, warm environment that supports both focused study and collaborative learning activities.
Circulation between different program areas is facilitated by a covered walkway on the ground floor that seamlessly connects the teaching spaces, cafeteria, staff rooms, and a sheltered playground area. This design creates an integrated sequence of indoor and outdoor zones that promote natural movement throughout the facility. A large south-facing roof overhang provides essential passive shading to limit solar heat gain during the warmer summer months, demonstrating the architects' commitment to bioclimatic design principles.
The cafeteria opens to carefully designed landscaped gardens through an expansive transparent facade that maintains strong visual continuity with the outdoor environment. The rear parking area features extensive plantings and has been positioned and designed to accommodate future expansion needs, supporting long-term adaptability as the surrounding district continues to evolve and grow.
In addition to the main school building, Coldefy and Relief Architecture undertook an ambitious adaptive reuse project across from the school. They successfully retrofitted the remaining portion of a 30-meter-wide early-20th-century train shed, transforming it into a 934-square-meter sports hall. The structure carefully retains its beautifully restored brick exterior while the interior introduces a light-filled space clad in oriented strand board (OSB) panels that deliberately expose the original iron trusses, celebrating the building's industrial heritage.
The sports hall serves a dual purpose, functioning as a school facility during academic hours while being shared with the wider community during evenings and weekends. This approach extends the public function of the overall development and maximizes the investment in community infrastructure.
Both the new school construction and the adaptive reuse of the train shed contribute to a larger framework of urban transformation that remains firmly anchored in celebrating and preserving the site's rich industrial heritage while meeting contemporary educational and community needs.
The project has achieved exceptional recognition for its environmental performance, earning an "Excellent" rating under France's rigorous High Environmental Quality (HQE) certification system and receiving a Low Carbon Building certificate. These certifications acknowledge the project's comprehensive approach to sustainable design and construction.
The school incorporates an advanced bioclimatic design approach supported by multiple energy-efficient systems. A biomass boiler using locally sourced wood pellets provides an impressive 80 percent of the building's heating demand, significantly reducing reliance on fossil fuels. Photovoltaic solar panels installed on the roof supply 15 percent of the building's electricity needs, while an innovative rainwater harvesting system covers half of the water used in sanitary facilities throughout the complex.
These comprehensive sustainability measures not only contribute to reducing the building's operational environmental impact but also serve as an educational model, demonstrating practical sustainability strategies within an active educational program where students can learn about environmental stewardship through direct experience with these systems.
