Colle?ge Maxime Javelly designed by Céline Teddé & Jérôme Apack architectes, Located in the Alpes de Hautes Provence, the peaceful town of Riez lives above its archaeological Roman heritage, buried along a former dried-up river. A dilapidated secondary school stands above these ruins. It was built in the 1960?s, at a time when such a heritage was rejected, to the point where it vanished in the depths of the school?s crawl spaces. The restructuring of the school?s functioning and its retrofitting raise the question of the future of these ruins and of their possible enhancement. Due to lack of funding, the project sponsor decided to facilitate access to archaeologists while denying it to the public and to students.
Photography: Julien Lanoo Nevertheless, it seemed to us that the school could humbly tell the story of its soil, thus anchoring it to its territory. In this environment rich with History, the aim is not to produce a generic but a specific architecture. As a result, we wanted to root the project in the history of the Roman city that Riez once was, by considering the school as a living, fully-fledged vestige on which an excavation campaign would be conducted.
Photography: Julien Lanoo
Thus, just like an archaeologist draws a squaring line on the soil of an exploration site, facades have been carved so that their cross-sections would reveal the various strata which make up the buildings, from their initial posts and beam structure to today?s mineral white coat...