Lab-Ecole

Anchored within a visibly spatially sectioned area, the Pierre-Elliot Trudeau elementary school drowns in its lack of space. Having become a space overflowed with solely classroom space, the school presents a severe lack to today’s educational needs.

Centered around an awareness that today’s education goes beyond the classroom, the driving concept for this project was to segment the school in order to better connect it. Drawing inspiration from the biological evolutionary process of segmentation, which allowed simple organisms to grow more complex, we suggested a school which would do exactly that; grow. Using the urban grid in order to cut the building along both axes allowed the introduction of "public pockets" which the private school spaces then revolved around. This operation allowed the splitting of the very long, boring hallways into more individually treated areas.

Just like the biological process, these interventions create "pockets of growth" which although repeated segments, take into account variable mechanisms of growth. This element manifests itself in the project under the form of malleable spaces, which allow different students to find their niche, and hopefully fall in love with their education environments. Even though each part has its specific characteristics, the whole comes together smoothly, which is the basis of the segmentation process.

Essentially, through this operation, we are able to give back to the school the public space it desperately needs and has gradually lost through the years, while also making it a communal space.