The project, designed by Boman, unfolds within a volume extended by eaves to protect the interior from direct sunlight. Its layout comprises four classrooms, restrooms accessible from both the courtyard and the classrooms, technical rooms, and a wide central circulation corridor with skylights and large windows overlooking the courtyard, creating cross-ventilation.
On the exterior, subtle shades of green flow across the surfaces of the walls, beams, eaves, woodwork, plaster, and tiles. Similarly, the green hue is found inside in the glazed tiles around the sinks, the stained-wood cabinets, the doors, and the beams.
Nanteuil Primary School by Boman. Photograph by Antoine Séguin.
Project description by Boman
Beneath the broad canopy of the schoolyard plane tree, the trapezoidal wooden volume shelters four new music classrooms. The timber both carries and wraps the space, expressing the coherence of an architecture that chooses simplicity, vitality, and environmental awareness.
The structure, framework, and cladding shape the building’s essence. Their subtle variations of tone emphasize continuity and reveal the precision of the construction.
Natural materials
A soft green hue links every element. It flows from one surface to another, settling on walls, beams, eaves, joinery, plaster, and tiles, and weaving a quiet unity.
Like a sustained musical note, this continuous tone connects the natural world and the architecture, allowing the project to resonate with its setting.
The facades reveal their materiality through broad openings and a play of textures: glazed ceramic tiles at the base, ribbed mineral plaster between each window, and smooth plaster above.
Together, these materials create a luminous skin where shades of green shimmer across surfaces and reflections.
A light-filled corridor
A central, cross-ventilated hallway links the classrooms, each opening through large windows onto the schoolyard. Inside, tones of green respond to each other — glazed tiles around washbasins, stained wooden cupboards, doors, beams, and exposed services.
Around the building, roof overhangs extend the volume and shade the rooms from the sun. The corridor rises with generous height, capturing daylight through skylights where shadows mark the passing of time.
Benches line the walls, drawing the gaze and stretching the perspective.
Through its simple form, natural materials, and refined palette, the building echoes the great plane tree, whose branches brush the roof — a living continuity between nature and architecture.
The program
• 4 classrooms
• Restrooms accessible from both the courtyard and the classrooms.
• Technical rooms.
• A large, central through-circulation space, lit from above with zenithal daylight.
Materials
• Structure.- timber.
• Window frames.- anodized aluminium - wood.
• Shading devices.- anodized aluminium roller shutters / interior textile curtains.
• Facades.- mineral render, integrally pigmented.
• Plinth.- glazed ceramic tiles.
• Interior joinery.- stained timber.
• Roof.- powder-coated profiled steel.
• Interior finishes.- stained timber wall cladding.
