Condorcet Campus. Porte de la Chapelle, Paris

In the city periphery, faced with a sea of infrastructural lines (Périphérique, train, motorways, etc.), the building is situated in a non-place.
It is therefore an introverted building that constructs its own inner landscape, and, on top, on its roof, cultivates a new nature.

In terms of volume, it is the sum of a low building and courtyards: an intersecting of lines, like its neighbouring infrastructures.
Rising up from this base is a solid, dense, rather opaque volume: the library, depository of knowledge. This volume dialogues with the two housing blocks which, like a gateway, stand nearby.

As regards both constructive logic and appearance, it is designed with industrial architecture in mind. Prefabricated structure, rigidly assembled, and light-weight, vertical facings. Repetition and opacity.
A new knowledge factory in the periphery.

Josep Lluís Mateo

Typology: Public Building
Project: 2017
Surface: 18,462m2
Location: Porte de la Chapelle, Paris.