Bâtir : L'École normale supérieure Paris-Saclay

The building of the École normale supérieure Paris-Saclay, designed by Renzo Piano Building Workshop, is a remarkable architectural achievement. Located at the heart of a scientific cluster, the complex extends over a 3-hectare site, with an impressive usable surface area of 64,000 m². Fusing innovation and aesthetics, the campus reflects Renzo Piano's versatile vision, offering spaces dedicated to technology, science and philosophy. The building has become an iconic place, where the architecture supports an exceptional multidisciplinary education.

The book “Bâtir” (Building) bears witness to the collaboration of its various stakeholders and gives a voice, among others, to Bernard Plattner (associate architect, RPBW) and Jean-Bernard Mothes (associate architect at RPBW), Anne-Sophie Verriest (landscape engineer at Après La Pluie), Olivier Canat (engineer, project director and director, AIA Ingénierie Lyon), Jean-Baptiste Bodin (acoustics and vibrations project director, Peutz) and Franck Boutté on the environmental aspect of the building.

“To design the centrality that will allow the school to embody its own metamorphosis, while enabling it to protect itself, Renzo Piano has this very beautiful idea of the figure of the cloister, of the enclosure.

Contrary to the lot sheet, which encouraged an organization into two distinct buildings separated by a north-south green passageway, cutting the establishment in two and making the garden an in-between space between the buildings, Piano proposes a unitary figure consisting of constructions on the periphery of a very large central garden inside the establishment.

With this figure, we create a form that does not depend on its context to exist. We recreate the outdoor space inside, to better control it, to make the elements, the wind, the water, our allies, and thus master comfort.” Franck Boutté, president and founder, of the Atelier Franck Boutté.