CREATION OF THE OASIS COURTYARD AT THE PORTE DE VILLIERS SCHOOL

The children as landscape architects

The sketch created by the children with the CAUE (Council of Architecture, Urbanism and Environment) of Paris served as our program. This comprehensive sketch reflects a dynamic commitment and a remarkable intensity of desire in the project approach by the teaching staff and the children of the school. We used this sketch to give form and a landscape image to the whole formed by all its elements: the variety of desired elements must coexist within an overall unity. The overall composition will provide the children with landscape images, while preserving the activities and typologies of the spaces they have developed. In other words, the spatially arranged program elements must create a landscape at a child’s eye level.

Building the project in successive layers:
Layer 1. Leveling establishes the spaces within a coherent overall framework and guides the water.
Layer 2. Water organizes the ground surfaces and the presence of vegetation.
Layer 3. Unitary furniture integrates a variety of functions.

The playground as an imaginary land:

To avoid the fragmentation and heterogeneity that can arise from the variety of spaces in my playground, we design them as regions of an imaginary land: the mountains, the countryside, the forest, the beach. The spaces are unified by an overall geography and form a landscape. The oasis playground is conceived as a model of a world, a model of the world of holidays. Each recess then becomes a mini-vacation getaway.

The main play areas—kitchen, huts, platforms, and climbing structures—organize an adventure playground around the central axis. Their layout offers a series of perspectives connected to the elementary school playground.
To the north of the axis, an educational river showcases different states of water and material textures. Children play at cooking in the mountain washhouse, from which springs a stream that continues as a torrent, then becomes a river where they play on the gravel pits, and finally an estuary that forms the beach.
To the west, the mountain gives way to the river, then the beach, and finally the countryside, represented by a wooded hill abutting the existing perimeter walls. The outdoor classroom is located in the countryside around the cherry tree, in the existing alcove. An educational planter is installed opposite, at the base of the facade. A mineral “dock” provides access to the facade. Most of the ground is made porous and permeable. A country lane allows cyclists and scooter riders to traverse the regions of the imaginary land of the kindergarten playground.

The site plan as a geographical map

The “educational river” forms the framework of the composition, connecting the lowest points of the playground and thus representing the path of rainwater falling from the sky. The river becomes a rain stream, sometimes a raging torrent, sometimes a calm, more verdant waterway. Water organizes the ground surfaces and plant life into an imaginary geography, a dreamlike land with very real landscape effects.

PROJECT MANAGEMENT FOR THE TRANSFORMATION OF SCHOOL COURTYARDS INTO OASIS COURTYARDS IN PARIS
Paysarchitectures, lead landscape architect + Cogicité, civil engineering and hydraulics consultant. Client: Sem Pariseine

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