Le Pradet, France

Designed by Europe 40 Under 40 laureate Jordi Pimas Medias and studio 1984 together with Boris Bouchet Architectes, the new music conservatory in Le Pradet, France is at the heart of a larger public project bringing together the development of a small park, the renovation of the old school into a municipal media library and the reopening of a pedestrian alley towards the city center.

Jordi Pimas Megias of studio 1984 was recently awarded a 2020 European 40 Under 40® Award from The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies and The Chicago Athenaeum.

The project asserts itself as a catalyst for the urbanity of the city center, energizing the pedestrian public space as a whole by linking these new public facilities with the central Paul Flamencq square.

The Toulon Provence Méditerranée music and dance conservatory is a public educational and artistic creation establishment, spread over 11 sites throughout the metropolitan area.

The project concerns the construction of one of these branches in Pradet, a municipality of 10,000 inhabitants whose privileged location between Toulon and the seaside makes it highly attractive in terms of tourism.

The site proposed by the Pradet town hall is the plot of the former Jean Jaures school, enclosed in the residential fabric of the historic city center.

Opposite the old rehabilitated school, a narrow strip at the back of the plot should accommodate the conservatory.

The unique atmosphere of the interior courtyard is marked by the presence of very beautiful trees, two pines and six plane trees.

Contrary to what the competition program foreshadowed, the first choice of the project is the superimposition of the program on 3 levels.

The free space allows the large trees to be preserved and creates a central void, thought of as a third facility between the media library and the conservatory, a healthy breath at the heart of the dense and private fabric of the district.

The project is based on a double reading. From the hillsides or the city center, it is perceived as an architecture that has been present for centuries.

Its cut-out volume, pierced sparingly, links it to the domestic scale of the large neighboring houses, built with the same materials, clear mineral facades and tiled roofs.

But in the open space of the courtyard, the verticality of the conservatory contrasts with the low volume of the old school.

The discovery of the extraordinary scale of the openings, of the double-height entrance portico, gives the more monumental image of the equipment and affirms its public character.

The conservatory is built with Estaillade stones, mined in the quarries of Oppède a few tens of kilometers from Pradet.

First of all, it is the choice of discretion, that of continuing to build in stone in a historic district where buildings, villas or even the old school have been built in limestone.

The conservatory faces the Saint-Raymond Nonnat Church, itself built in the 19th century with stones from the quarries of Oppède.

It is the proximity and vitality of the massive stone mining sectors in the quarries of Provence that make the material economically relevant even today.

The use of massive stone in construction is an environmental performance.

Little transformed, little transported, it gives the building a good carbon footprint and great durability.

A stone wall fulfills an important part of the contemporary needs of a wall, structure, sound insulation, exterior and interior cladding, where the current wall would have required 7 or 8 layers of different materials, accompanied by the energy necessary for their transformation, their transport and their implementation.

Then, building in massive stones is evidence of comfort in a Mediterranean climate for its capacity to store freshness.

Based on the Mediterranean Sustainable Building benchmark, the project has taken thermal calculations very far with the aim of preserving certain massive stone facades without interior lining.

Combined with stone shifts and concrete floors, the building offers considerable thermal inertia, ensuring a significant phase shift between day and night and therefore optimum summer comfort passively.

The existing plant masses and a system of adjustable sun shades controlled in real-time by a weather station complete the bioclimatic operation of the equipment.

Finally, this is a symbolic and technical response to the acoustic isolation needs of the activities inherent in the conservatory for its neighbors. It is of course possible to make acoustic protections from synthetic materials or concrete, but there is something essential to enveloping music in 35 cm of massive stones.

The general shape of the butterfly plan, made up of non-orthogonal walls, also determines the acoustic quality of the music rooms.

On this geometric basis, each room is a trapezoid which, together with the interior wood coverings, controls the reverberation effects. It is also a symbolic reference to stereotomy, a geometric discipline of assembling and cutting stones.

In the large orchestra hall, where the conservatory is performing, the structural and thermal design of the project makes it possible to stage four interior walls made of massive stones.

Again, none of these walls are parallel. The specific shape of the back wall of the room, drawn like a broken line, is also the result of a precise search for acoustic quality and creates a spectacular aesthetic pattern.

The architects sought to move away from the image of primitive architecture, the archetype of the ancient ruin of the neighboring church or the contemporary Chaix where only stones have the right of city in facades.

The public is welcomed in a generous hall, widely lit naturally, sized to be a real place of life.

It serves the administration area and the teachers’ room, oriented towards the calm of the patio, as well as the orchestra hall.

Its direct access from the outside and its dimensions make it a very functional performance hall.

On the mezzanine, a waiting area offers a view of the orchestra room below and allows disabled access to the stands.

On the upper floors, the circulations are generously sized and judiciously arranged so as to be able to move very large instruments without difficulty.

Lit naturally, they are pleasant places to wait for the start of a class, to meet, to rest.

The classrooms offer unprecedented views of the landscapes of the city center, the church or further afield towards the relief of the scrubland.

Project: Conservatoire National à Rayonnement Régional
Architects: Studio 1984 and Boris Bouchet Architectes
Manufacturers: Carrières de Provence
Client: Communauté d’Agglomération Toulon Provence Méditerranée TPM
Photography: Benoit Alazard