Académie du climat × 36 Student Architects × Encore Heureux: A Café Under Project

Sanitary restrictions have been completely changing our lives for almost a year now, yet students are often in an even more difficult position, having to take their classes primarily online and to limit their social interactions, combined with the difficulty in finding opportunities for vocational experiences, as architecture firms are facing the need to limit the presence of their teams. These observations gave rise to the idea of offering thirty-six short paid internships under the guidance of the architects of Encore Heureux, as part of the FAIRE program, to design the future café of the Académie du climat that will soon be operating out of the former town hall of the 4^th arrondissement of Paris.

The challenge is as much to define the programming to meet the expectations of the future users as to help shape this space following a virtuous approach, respectful of the existing build, and using reused or biosourced carbon-free materials in line with the aspirations of this iconic project. An initiative of the City of Paris, the Académie du Climat’s ambition is to create a lively hotspot and forum for exchange that would be educational, participatory, and free, to raise awareness among the youth of the region of Paris to environmental issues, and to provide training and support them in their projects. In this context, student architects have been tasked with responding to the wishes of the members of the Youth Climate Coalition.

The exhibition, on display and visible from the street, retraces this collective adventure marked by interventions by industry professionals supporting the initiative: Mickaël Colin, deputy head of GRAHAL, on heritage issues; Morgan Moinet, head of the engineering consultancy Remix, on reuse and biosourced materials; and Aurore Rapin and Marion Tissot, from the Yes We Camp collective, on governance and programming issues. It also reveals the students’ proposal, which combines spaces for discussions, exhibitions, screenings, meetings, as well as a café with a counter made in raw earth.

The project presented at the end of the internships was commended by the board of the Académie du climat, the youth coalition, planning authorities, and the team at city hall. Called “Le réveil” [The Awakening] to reflect the sorely needed awakening of climate consciousness, it attests to the capacity of collaborative design. Next May, the first in-situ construction should bring about the raw-earth counter, a symbol of the future café of the Académie du climat.

Designed in 1860 by Antoine-Nicolas Bailly following Haussmann’s transformation of Paris and the creation of the twenty arrondissements, the town hall of the 4^th arrondissement is a Renaissance-inspired building immediately recognizable from its banded and bossed columns
standing between the three arcades of the central avant-corps. Sometimes dubbed the Mairie de l’Hôtel de Ville (literally, the town hall of the city hall), the building is located between Rue François Miron and Rue de Rivoli in the Saint-Gervais neighborhood of the Marais, to the east of the Hôtel de Ville proper, and overlooks Place Baudoyer. Since the 2020 consolidation of the central arrondissements of Paris, the former town hall is about to be reborn as the Académie du climat in 2021.

A place of learning, the Académie du climat is aimed at training young people on environmental issues and to support them in their projects geared towards climate change mitigation. It will be open to all, with a specific focus on the youth (aged 9 to 25), promoting a pluralistic and dynamic education. Through self-directed educational methods, the Académie wishes to foster green innovation through doing and civic engagement, while fostering the scientific understanding of environmental issues. To do so, the notions of climatology and other useful insights into the environmental situation will be expanded upon, ultimately helping understand how to possibly mitigate our impacts. Also, learning by doing will happen through work on specific topics such as construction, transportation, and digital technologies.

The architectural program is distributed between two different spaces. The first one is centered on the bar and offers coffee house debates, screenings, and other cultural performances. A second, cozier space, will invite users to meet in a calm environment. The serving space serves as a transition between these two atmospheres. As for the outdoor facilities, they are also divided in two distinct areas. One is visible from the public space, as a few tables are set up in front of the façade overlooking Place Baudoyer. The other, located in the inner courtyard, connects the users of the “third place” café and the actors of the Académie du climat. Following on from the objectives supported by the Académie du climat, these spaces are developed around reuse as well as biosourced or geosourced materials. For this reason, a reuse diagnosis was carried out on site, in order to make the most of available resources. A selection of furniture aims to perpetuate the history of the place. The reuse of the existing benches and bar are an illustration of this. At the same time, the furniture was designed following an environmentally-friendly approach. 

 
 Somewhere in a third place
Something is at work
A curious hundred hands or so are dancing
Shaping and maneuvering through space

In front of the square, the clasp of minds is stirring
Engaged in a swift and precise dance
Where the architect thinks out and builds the café
Around the almost-forgotten street corner

 From the outset, the meeting astonished
Students, researchers, and alumni
From all sorts of horizons and different schools Together formed a masked ball

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Pavillon de l’Arsenal and Encore Heureux Architectes would like to thank the institutions, companies, and individuals that have contributed to this project:

Académie du climat: Natacha Hilaire, Raphaël Paushitz, Mathilde Poupée / Youth Coalition: Victor Ferres, Marie Forgerit, Christophe Gaydier, Ines Meersman, Agathe Redier / Experts: Mickaël Colin, Aurore Rapin, Marion Tissot / City of Paris: Nathalie Chazalette, Bruno Lambert, Michel Sonnois, Marion Waller, Michèle Zaoui / National schools of architecture of Greater Paris: Philippe Bach, ENSA Paris-Val de Seine; François Brouat, ENSA Paris-Belleville; Caroline Lecourtois, ENSA Paris-La Villette; Luc Liogier, ENSA Paris-Malaquais; Jean-Christophe Quinton, ENSA-Versailles; Amina Sellali, ENSA Paris-Est.

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