For IXCAMPUS, Baumschlager Eberle Architectes and SAME propose a landscape strategy that seeks to integrate the project into its surroundings, combined with an innovative approach to timber prefabrication, while preserving the gardens and architecture of the Anglo-Norman residence.
IXCAMPUS by Baumschlager Eberle Architekten + SAME. Photograph by Cyrille Weiner.
The complex is articulated through two clearly differentiated elements: the teaching building, with its elongated plan, and the Incubator, whose cruciform geometry marks the entrance to the site. In plan, both buildings are based on simple, easily recognisable geometric forms, where different shapes, although dispersed, remain connected through a common structure and a shared material language, as in the “visual scores” of Wassily Kandinsky.
IXCAMPUS by Baumschlager Eberle Architekten + SAME. Photograph by Cyrille Weiner.
The Grande Orangerie is conceived as a longitudinal building carefully positioned among the existing century-old trees. To enhance its integration into the landscape, the terrain is excavated to create a gentle depression, allowing the building to become partially embedded in the topography and reducing its apparent height.
IXCAMPUS by Baumschlager Eberle Architekten + SAME. Photograph by Cyrille Weiner.
The Life Science Incubator, specialising in oncology, accommodates offices and laboratories and forms part of the ZAC Grand Parc mixed-use development, a new neighbourhood in which the streets are defined by buildings that, as they rise in height, break down into different volumes, creating workspaces capable of functioning both as offices and laboratories.
To respond to this requirement, the building is organised around a simple primary structure of concrete columns and slabs. This configuration allows the use of the spaces to be modified in the future without major interventions to the building’s structure, potentially enabling its transformation into housing, a municipal library or a school.
