Unusual first implantation and invoice are explained by the context

A high school hunting the other in Paris. Industrial buildings of the former professional lycée Raspail successive plethora walls of Guillaume Tirel hotel school. Between the two, more than ten years have elapsed, long vacancy due in part to the removal of asbestos and the deconstruction of the first settlement. Named for Guillaume Tirel, master queux of King Charles V which is the first compilation of recipes, this new hotel school, the fourth in Paris, takes his position with dignity on the boulevard Raspail, enjoying of a privileged situation close to the Fondation Cartier. All the more remarkable and view it fits online focus of avenue Edgar-Quinet which tether the Montparnasse cemetery, last remains of artists and intellectuals of the century.

On this sensitive site, architects Brenac and Gonzalez, winners of the competition ten years ago, derive their reverence to the neighbourhood with elegance. They have multiplied the small attentions in a large a little stiff gesture that leaves no one indifferent. Unusual first implantation and invoice are explained by the context. Offset and uncoupled, the book takes a double speech to meet the urban regulations and the character of the place. "The building was to mark the required alignment on the boulevard, summarizes Xavier Gonzalez," and we wanted for our part, identify the intersection with the campaign-first street in order to preserve the view on the beautiful building of artists found there."

Program complex and provided the hotel school is lent to a subtle articulation of volumes between basement alignment and a body of implanted bias building to angle the campaign-first street. The edge of the ground and clear offers a small public garden returned to the city and the ornate ceramic building, immortalized by a Jean-Paul Belmondo "A piece of breath" at the end of Jean-Luc Godard film, retains its openness to the crossroads Raspail Edgar-Quinet.

Vocational education with its two restaurants and its application kitchens occupies the basement, topped the school restaurant upstairs. General education moved to the upper levels of the building slipped bias on the boulevard and the places of life school (documentation centre, home of the students...) camping in intermediate position, to the second and third floors of the bar, with a recreation yard built and planted on the roof of the basement. A large gap at these levels reported the presence of this terrace next to Montparnasse, the building in bridge 22 metres above in scope.

Alignment and the Building basement of bias are in head on the building of housing, vertical pivot realizing the fixings on the adjoining building. "The great diversity of the program has allowed the fragmentation of the form," notes the architect in his enumeration of functions housed in volumes. The redan advanced campaign-first street and houses the administration within the hall connecting the forecourt and the Court of service, application hotel rooms on the floors, the health service and accommodation of students in the last level. In total, the volumetric overcomes the contradictions of the site by combining the imposed alignment and wanted deletion, with the added bonus of the gap of a loggia on the city.

A good-natured minerality

The operation retrieves its pieces per unit architecture that draws from the Fondation Cartier (Jean Nouvel, architect) the principle of screens of glass to affirm and enhance the basement to the alignment, thereby providing a showcase application restaurants open on the street and accessible to the public. For the rest, she opts for a good-natured minerality on this profile mainly boulevard Haussman. "Of stone liquid tinted in color of Paris", sets out Xavier Gonzalez to discuss the precise formulation of used concrete.

The book is a nod to the mineral mass of the illustrious Hotel Lutetia camped below on the boulevard. The long bias building stands basement thus erects in the regularity of a continuous constructive system on all sides.

Rigorously repetitive, with facades consist of prefabricated gantry enquillés dry on partly superior embedded plates of the lintel. "Prefabrication concrete reached here the accuracy of the metal construction, with a tolerance of 2 mm per metre, is the architect." All these prefabricated elements in the form of comb, that can reach up to 8 metres long, were transported by special convoys to avoid the nuisance of a traditional site in this sensitive environment, considers useful to clarify. The system has required lot of updates to satisfy all configurations encountered in construction, with thicknesses of floor variable and different insulations, to save appearances and to maintain the regularity of the drawing. "This clarification, Olivier Brenac and Xavier Gonzalez added the preciousness of set performed to steel stainless steel and a single frame comprising Bay between glazing set (2/3 of the width) and an opening (1/3) also got dressed of stainless steel. Same vertical frame reigns throughout, colored banner glass screen old foreground rose finely timed brushed concrete facades which are indented. The color occurs indoors through footage adapted to the functions and places. From time to time, architects are also fun to develop the decor of the restaurants of application and rooms with a touch of unsuspecting kitsch from the outside. This unusual front fudges on boulevard Raspail induced in the heart of Montparnasse that refined rigorous contemporary tension, signs of an architectural revival in the capital.