Conception urbaine du "quartier Joliot Curie" et maîtrise d'oeuvre architecturale de l'Ecole Centrale Paris (ECP) / Urban design of the neighborhood 'Joliot Curie' and architectural design of the Ecole Centrale Paris (ECP) at Paris-Saclay campus / École Centrale Ingenieurschule

While all the major international Universities are competing for the top positions in the Shanghai’s ranking, in France, educational institutions aim to achieve coherence and visibility.

In this context, the Ecole Centrale de Paris has decided to develop a strategic alliance with Supélec and to reinforce its links with partners like the ENS Cachan and Paris XI. The creation of the multidisciplinary campus of Excelencia in Saclay will physically materialize such strategic connections.

The Ecole Centrale’s installation on Moulon’s Plateau represents a real founding act: it is the first step in the creation of the Joliot-Curie district in the Paris-Saclay cluster, and the first physical connection between Centrale and Supélec.

Innovation, entrepreneurship, leadership, international openness. The identity of the school remains behind these key words, the underlying quality of the school being humanity.

After a period of isolation during the preparatory classes, after surviving the tension of very selective competitive exams, students must absolutely find in the school a place where they can grow personally. The school has the double responsibility to give high-quality training to its students, but also and over all to teach them to be sensible managers. The school should not isolate them in a bubble disconnected from urban life.

The challenge of the Centrale’s move in Saclay consists in creating a fragment of city, a condensed version of urban life, in a place where, for the moment, there are only fields and scattered buildings. As we see it, the existing site is not dense, the programs being scattered all over the site. Will the creation of a campus be enough to realistically set up a piece of city? Urbanization takes a long time, and the city will not necessarily be created entirely at once. It will take time before Saclay becomes a real scientific cluster of the Grand Paris. Hazards, especially economic, will modify the setting up of the programs.

Our strategy consists in condensing, step by step, “pieces of life” in synergy with each other, in a pragmatic way within our site.

To ensure that the building of the Ecole Centrale Paris will be a real founding act for the creation of life in the Joliot-Curie district, we have decided not to spread the programs making up its basis in the whole site, but to concentrate them around Supélec, within a single block. The first act of creation of the Joliot-Curie district will be the setting up of the “îlot-béguinage” Centrale-Supélec.

The alliance between Centrale and Supélec is exacerbated by the configuration of this macroscopic block. Square shape, it is occupied in its centre by Supélec, and on its outline, by the MOP and PPP programs of Centrale. From here, the campus will be able to extend gradually, the other programs interacting with each others little by little.

Our goal is to create a strong physical link between teachers, researchers, entrepreneurs, and students; so they can interact, they can meet, be in direct contact, share the same life, live together. To build a new urban condition, that may perhaps mean to build a new human condition.

Program: Ecole Centrale de Paris: laboratoires + classrooms + gym + cafeteria.