Crche Rue Pierre Budin

by ECDM

French architects ECDM have completed a nursery in Paris with rippling concrete walls (+
slideshow).

The billowing curves of the facade were created using a series of prefabricated panels,
which wrap around three sides of the Crche Rue Pierre Budin but are only interrupted by
windows on one elevation.

A central courtyard is located at the heart of the two-storey building, surrounded by nursery
rooms that accommodate up to 66 children.

A tree-like metal umbrella shades this courtyard and can be seen hovering above the
rooftop from the street.

See all our stories about nurseries and kindergartens

Above: photograph is by ECDM

Photography is by Luc Boegly, apart from where otherwise stated.

The text below is from ECDM:

Day Nursery in Paris

The project takes place into a heterogeneous district made of buildings of any sizes, of any
styles, any periods. Its an environment slightly old-fashioned, hybrid and disintegrated,
typical of the heterogeneous architecture which characterizes the Parisian peri-urban
zones.

Above: photograph is by ECDM

Modernity came to complete this disorder : Adjacent to the site, an out of size construction,
built in derogation of the property limits (adding a supplementary urban intention

parameter), forbids any common denominator, any possibility of creating a homogeneous

composition.

The day-nursery is thus an attempt, for a tiny building of public utility, to exist in an
unfavorable relationship in the shade of a twelve story construction which takes light,
overhangs and crushes everything.

The program of the day-nursery introduces a small size, a small scale. If the volume comes
from the requirements of the project concerning surfaces and scale, the writing of the
building results from its specificity. The day-nursery is a horizontal. Protective and
introverted, it occupies the ground, interacts with the outside spaces. Developed on two
levels, it is organized to get the maximum of light and sunshine, and to by-pass the shade
of the giant nearby building.

The project mixes the outside and internal spaces, organizes around a walk the 2 levels in
a buckle of small paths and terraces, altering green and mineral areas. From the
requirements of the program, it results a monolithic and protective facade. The building is in
prefabricated concrete, long-lasting and resistant to the torments of the urban life. The
surrounding wall is drilled by translucent and colored windows. These windows have
various heights, for a place thought as much for the children than for the adults, the
parents or the staff.

The housing part is treated as entity. The matter is to propose an autonomous writing to an
additional element, both complementary and exterior to the program of the nursery itself, to
propose to the future inhabitant a living environment desynchronized from his workplace.

This volume lays on the nursery, slightly out of the building line, in order to give a specific
urban writing to this residential space.

The project is a setting of a living place, with its specificities, its needs and also its poetic
dimension, the goal is to propose for this tiny program a frame of living that generates as
much an emotion with the future occupants (children, parents, staff) than the local
residents.

Program: Day Nursery for 66 children and 1 service apartment

Client: Ville de Paris
Architect: Emmanuel Combarel Dominique Marrec architectes (ECDM)
Engineering: C&E ingenierie, Cotracoop (mandataire du groupement dentreprises), Bonna
Sabla et Il Cantiere, Lafranque
Location: 15 Rue Pierre Budin, PARIS XVIII
Site area: 875 m SHON / 1937 m SHOB

Cost: 3.1 M HT
Finished: 2012
Photographers: Luc Boegly, Benot Fougeirol