Ecole Maternelle Trois Bornes

A modernist chef d'ouevre, this school building used brick to fantastic effect to decorate concrete curves, balconies and porthole windows. The narrow, pink coloured bricks were layed in alternate directions, vertically then horizontally, giving the facade additional texture and movement.Interesting side note - an air-raid shelter was built in the basement and used by local residents during the 39-45 war.Address: 39 Rue Trois Bornes, 75011Architect: René Requet-Barville and Louis LonguetYear of construction: 1...

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An Original Brick Facade

The sheltered housing project on the Rue Morand built on a previously run-down site in Paris garnered a lot of praise when it was completed. Andrew Ayers in his book 'The Architecture of Paris' called it "a colourful clearing in a dense and dingy area of the city", but times can change quickly. The structure is still an interesting one, but the surrounding area has changed. A busy park today sits opposite and modern sports hall has been built alongside, and it is now the imperfections of this structure that have become visible. Panels are falling off the wall, and the building now seems somewhat cut off from its neighbours, hidden as it is behind high gates and fencing. There is one unique feature though which still helps it to stand out -...

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Ecole des Arts et Metiers

Stand in front of the main entrance to this prestigious technical school and you will see a classical stone structure, but if you wander around the perimeter of the site you will discover more mysterious buildings where brick dominates. It should be easy to guess which aspects of this structure grabbed my attention!The Ecole des Arts et Metiers turns students into engineers, and it is particularly on this site that they gain hands on experience with practical work. In essence it is a working building, a factory that churns out engineers on its production line. They arrive in their final year of acadamia through the clean white walls of the entrance, but leave via the brick walls at the rear on thier way to their first professional assignments....

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The First Social Housing

Almost all social housing in Paris up until the 1960s (when concrete took over) was built using brick, so it is entirely appropriate that the first such structure should have been constructed with the material. At the beginning of the 20th century, such buildings followed Art Nouveau inspirations of the time and used brick and ceramics to very attractive effect, but here in the Rue Jeanne d'Arc, the brick is almost frightening in its rough simple form.The architect Wilfred Chabrol had been asked to draw something functional, and he designed a structure with 35 almost identical two-room apartments. No thought was given to making the facade of the building attractive, indeed its harsh, cold form was supposed to act as a deterent. This was a structure...

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Notre Dame de la Sagesse

One hundred years after Anatole De Baudet's St Jean de Montmartre church became the first religious building to use brick in the city, Pierre-Louis Faloci again used the material to create this modern structure, interestingly also the last such building to be erected in France in the twentieth century. Difficult to find in the warrens of the new Paris Rive Gauche sector, and not obvious immediately as a religious structure, the building nevertheless deserves a visit.The Paris Rive Gauche district behind the Bibliothèque François Mitterand has mushroomed out of the ground at an incredible pace in the last 20 years. Now a mixture of office buildings, apartments and universities, it was decided that a new place of worship should also be built....

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L'IRCAM (Extension)

Few visitors to the Centre Georges Pompidou are aware that an integral part of the scheme is also a centre for research into music and sound, the IRCAM (L'Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique). The reason for this oversight is very clear - the original structure is completely underground, and it wasn't until the architect Renzo Piano added an above ground level extension that anybody could be expected to know of its existence.For the original structure, Piano and Richard Rogers had been free to use the design and materials of their choice, but when Piano was asked to add additional floor space and come back above ground he was forced to respect Paris planning laws. He would be limited to a certain height, and above all,...

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