As architect Vincent Parreira walks around the Louis de Vion school complex in Montévrain, near Paris, his inclination to see from a child’s point of view quickly becomes apparent. He frequently drops to the ground to experience spaces as a child might, gazing up into a double-height volume as if from a preschooler’s sleeping mat, or exulting in a sky view from a window set below an adult’s line of vision. His concern goes beyond tailoring spaces to children’s physical stature, however: every aspect of the architecture is conceived to address their social and emotional needs.
School should be “a real universe in microcosm,” says Parreira, “a place that feels different from your house and the world outside—where there is a sense of surprise and possibility.” To make an environment in which children can feel secure and enjoy their independence, his instinct was to make an inward-looking campus with limited views in from or out to the street. This introversion was also suggested by the building’s context—or lack of it. Montévrain is a popular, fast-growing suburb whose dominant feature is the EuroDisney theme park, just visible from the school across farmland. Closer at hand, housing is now going up on all sides that wasn’t there when Parreira’s Paris-based office, AAVP, won the school project in a competition.
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