The proposal developed by Dominique Coulon & Associés is part of an initiative promoted by the City Council, aimed at positioning Besançon as a leader in teaching and research. In this context, the Advanced School of Engineering building, designed to teach and train future biomedical engineers, arises in response to the growing demand from industry.
Strategically, the design is structured in two parts, anticipating possible future expansion. One part houses the specialized programs such as the large lecture hall, the conference room, and the administrative area, while the other contains the classrooms for general use.
Conceived as a green oasis within the city, the campus renovation, carried out by the landscape architecture firm Altitude 35, incorporates an extensive network of green spaces. Accordingly, the school's interiors maintain a direct and constant relationship with the exterior: all classrooms enjoy panoramic views of the forest, while the communal spaces benefit from a generous influx of natural light.
Franche-Comté Advanced School of Engineering (ISIFC) by Dominique Coulon & Associés. Photograph by Eugeni Pons.
Project description by Dominique Coulon & Associés
Context
The University of Franche-Comté, France, was founded 600 years ago. Today, it brings together institutions in six towns and cities. The Bouloie-Temis campus lies in the north-west of the French city of Besançon. It forms a remarkable architectural site that combines a 19th-century historical monument with rationalist architecture of the 1960s. It is the university’s largest complex.
The design of new buildings for the Franche-Comté Advanced School of Engineering (ISIFC) is part of a long story of structural and social transformations. The city council of Besançon was aware of the disrepair of its main campus and was driven by a desire to give its city a major hub for teaching and research. So it began a modernisation project that aimed to create or renovate 40,000m² of buildings sustainably by the year 2027. As much as 2,000m² of this floor area would be dedicated to technology.
The ISIFC teaches and trains future biomedical engineers. It needed new buildings to double its number of people and support a strong demand from industry. Its graduates are able to design devices for diagnosis, treatment and medical assistance and take part in clinical research.
The campus renovation is rooted in its era as it will also be a breathing oasis of natural greenery for the city and will offer 65,000m2 of landscaped parkland and 1,000m2 of public greenhouses. This “parkland campus” was designed by the landscaping firm Altitude 35 as a physical and biological extension of the woods that surround the city. You get around it using sustainable transport. The choice of plants was made to preserve and showcase the site’s remarkable natural heritage and take global warming into account.
The new campus was designed to support changes in practices among lecturers and students. The academic community will be invited as much as firms and local inhabitants to meet up in these convivial spaces or enjoy sporting or cultural events here. They will also have the possibility of open-air work here and of shopping in a solidarity grocery. The city and the campus merge into one here thanks to several landscaped connections and new transport links.
Description
The engineering school lies on the Bouloie-Temis campus in Besançon, France, in parallel to the road that runs up its biggest slope. The positioning of the spaces built creates the major advantage of being absorbed by a small listed wood, which forges a close relationship between the rooms and the trees, which are very near to the elevations.
So, in a way, the building only has one face – that which looks out at the street, which is the main road running through the campus. The construction was divided into two parts to leave the possibility of a future extension being built. There is one section that contains the specific-purpose parts like the large lecture and conference hall with a big classroom and the administrative hub. And there is a second section that houses the ordinary classrooms.
The second section was placed on pillars for flexible use of the spaces and in order to leave the possibility of an extension being built later. The classrooms offer a sweeping view of the woods and the tall trees provide them with coolness and protection from the sun.
The idea of a gradual slide made it possible for us to create a transitional space that produced inner spaciousness. The collective spaces were designed to make interactions easier and to also make it easier to organise exhibitions, which take place regularly here, given the teaching approach of this engineering school.
The spaces are cavernous and bathed in an abundance of natural light. A raw, rustic atmosphere emerges in them. The student common room with its double height in a vivid orange tone adds a contrast that showcases both the soft plainness of the concrete and the sense of surprise of this colourful burst.
The large lecture and conference hall connects to an examinations room via a sliding partition. This sliding partition was not requested in the programme, but it makes it possible to create a vast space that is ideally suited to the international congresses that take place here. Natural light fills the space and the cross-section shows the advantage of bringing these two spaces together. So we have here a small building that is, in fact, very big. It offers space that can expand in accordance with uses.
The solutions put in place offer reversibility and adjustability. This adjustability serves a teaching approach that is constantly changing. The question that we asked ourselves in this project was about permanence.
