School-Lycee of Avon - Fontainebleau – France

Abstract

Replaces and enlarges the old school city of Avon, a group of educational buildings which were in precarious safety conditions, of which those which were still in good condition have been kept. The new installations, with a capacity for 1,142 pupils of both sexes, day-students, boarders and semi-boarders, covers a very wide and varied building programme, comprising numerous classrooms for specific and general classes, social-educational premises, dormitories for boarders, dining rooms, kitchens, surgery, administration, and offices and rooms for teachers and staff in charge. The whole is completed with a carpark and garage for bicycles. Construction, executed according to an industrial method in which concrete predominates, is organized through the juxtapositioning of the square bodies, subdivided in turn into nine cells, 9.20 m each side. The dormitory block and porter's lodge is separate. The Centre is located in the Wood of Fontainebleau, which comprises the greatest conditioning factor in construction; so, the treatment of frontages was subordinated to their entire integration in the surrounding environment. The same can be said of supplying energy needs, being reduced in this case to electricity and solar energy due to their non-polluting nature.