A politically committed and militant project!

Without artifice, the project chooses to highlight natural resources, bio-sourced and local. The timber comes from the nearby spruce forests, sawn and cut by the students of the technical school of wood, implemented by a committed and local company. Almost anecdotal but voluntarist, the project located in the Bugey massif summons the Hauteville stone once used to build Lyon, in a raw and expressive implementation to sit down and take off the building.

In the DRC, the base as emanation of the rocky soil, expresses this minerality through the dialogue of a clear concrete and the Hauteville stone. The program, placed on this base, is all wood, local spruce when it is protected, douglas fir when it is exposed to the vertical and chestnut on the horizontal.

Technically, a wood pellet boiler supplies the building and a wood dryer. A technical gallery, backed by land, contains the electrical pathways, fluids and networks of dual flow ventilation – a pragmatic device that saves the project of any plenum.

Text provided by the architects.

The compact volume, conceived through a passive design strategy to reduce the building’s energy demand, organizes the overall layout. On the access side, it defines a public square; on the other sides, it encloses the more private areas that make up the nursery school spaces: the south-facing classroom patios, the shared patio to the east, and the service strip located on the northern side.
A central courtyard promotes cross ventilation and the entry of natural light. This void creates a new educational space that, while outdoors, is protected from the wind. Its visibility from all interior spaces facilitates supervision and control of the children.
Solar control is optimized through the classroom porch and the incorporation of vegetation within the courtyard. Cross ventilation is planned both in plan and section, enhanced by large openings on the south-facing façades and smaller, higher openings on the northern façade.
The construction adopts a sequence of vaults that evoke the primal sense of shelter through their concave form. The structural system is organized through the repetition, in each bay, of a curved profile made of laminated timber beams. The building is modulated into six bays, each seven meters wide. These beams naturally resolve the slope of the roof. The ceramic roof highlights the path of rainwater. Just as the façade guides the entry of light, the roof shapes the itinerary of water, so that rain ceases to be a mere residue.
This spatial configuration gives rise to a warm and sheltered interior, generating a welcoming atmosphere for early childhood—a place that embraces, protects, and conveys calm.
The building is organized into three longitudinal strips. A central courtyard acts as the heart of the building, arranging the rooms around a continuous circulation. This space not only hosts children but also educates them. Constructive honesty, based on exposing structures, textures, and natural materials—without superfluous finishes or additive layers—turns the space into a didactic support. Matter becomes legible and tangible: what children see and touch explains how the building is constructed.
The impact on natural resources is reduced through the use of materials with a low environmental footprint, both during construction and throughout the building’s life cycle, prioritizing efficient construction systems, materials with controlled life cycles, and passive strategies.
Thermal mass is concentrated in elements in contact with the ground, such as concrete slabs, stone walls, and brick masonry. The roof, more exposed to solar radiation, is resolved as a lightweight, ventilated system with low thermal inertia, whose light-coloured ceramic tiles reduces solar absorption in summer.
The building is supported by a set of active systems that enhance its efficient performance and reduce its environmental impact.
The architecture is based on four principles: a climatic response tailored to the context, high energy efficiency through passive strategies, the use of natural, local, low-impact materials, and efficient technology that supports the building without imposing itself.
The result is a kind and welcoming building, where form, construction, and use combine naturally, giving rise to a comprehensible and habitable space that seeks to integrate respectfully into the landscape.

Text provided by the architects.

The classrooms’ street crosses through the entire facility from east to west, forming another axis structuring the school. Split in two by the interior play area, each part of the axis is embellished with four classrooms and patios. There is a vestibule/cloakroom at each classroom entrance and stands for games, which can be used for pedagogical or playful purposes.

At the intersection of the two axes that structure the school, a large interior play area serves as the genuine central area of the establishment, increasing the number of possible uses. This multi-purpose space can be used in the morning and evening to welcome preschoolers, in addition to the multi-purpose rooms and motricity rooms. In case of heavy rain, it complements the exterior playground but also hosts exhibitions and shows.

The dual-aspect classrooms benefit from multiple sources of natural light and very good ventilation. Their positioning between patios to the north and the school playground to the south ensures different ambiances in the same classroom. To the north, with light pouring in from the patio, a shared space built of wood between two classes creates a peaceful and calm area. To the south, the largest volume of the classes directly overlooking the playground is more collective. Each classroom also benefits from a ‘private’ play area overlooking the ‘common’ playground.

This shaded area improves flows between the interior and exterior, becoming a real extension of the classrooms. The playground, situated to the south and shaded by a line of trees, is shared between kindergarten and elementary classes. A genuine green setting, it is an ideal framework for the discovery of nature and outdoor games. A space dedicated to biodiversity, laid out on the roof, completes the exterior spaces made available. It includes tubs for growing vegetables and large picnic tables, favoring teaching activities related to the natural world. Finally, the playing field will also be accessible during recreation times, thus encouraging the practice of physical activities.

By definition, a school building must make its commitment to the environment visible. This principle has been applied to the project in both the choice of materials and the functioning of the building. The school’s load-bearing stone façades come from the Bonneuil-en-Valois quarry, located less than 60km from the construction site. Its thickness ensures the building’s thermal inertia while enhancing the value of the facility’s sculpted volumes. Between the classrooms, mud bricks are added to the wooden structure, increasing the visibility of natural and bio-sourced materials in the building’s construction.

The patios embellish and punctuate the common areas to the extent that all the spaces of the project benefit from very good natural lighting, fresh air, and comfortable humidity. Their placement naturally ventilates all the areas designed for children, as well as the common areas, which can then become genuine inhabited places and learning areas. The roof of the sporting area is equipped with photovoltaic panels producing more energy than the building consumes. The rest of the roof is planted, which improves thermal performance and total rainwater retention, while also providing inhabitants of the neighborhood with attractive views.

Text provided by the architects.

Stones with Hooks — When the crowds fade away, we can still find traces of the summer in the riverbed. The riverbed has both shallow and deep sections; along the side adjacent to the road, the riverbed has been artificially raised and enclosed with pebbles to form “waterfront private spaces”. When we went down to the riverbank, we noticed that many of the pebbles around these boxes had iron hooks attached. It was easy to deduce that the hooks were installed by the villagers – so that the canopies could be firmly tied to the pebbles during the peak season.

The villagers did not make any rigid, permanent modifications to the river channel cross-section. Instead, they used the local, non-engineering method of moving pebbles to divide the riverbed into functional zones: a safe, shallow recreational area and a deeper, farther flood discharge area. The waterfront spaces, built flexibly with local materials, can be easily restored even after a flash flood – all it takes is piling up the stones again to revive the consumer scene. Movable, sustainable, and low-impact – this is truly a wonderful example of “traceless stream economy” and collective local construction.

Sunshade, Stream Play and River Crossing — There was no need for excessive “groundless” planning; the site itself is alive, and it had already outlined the task at hand: Xialang is beautiful, and it would be even more beautiful with the addition of a canopy for shade, a few steps for easy access to the water, and a line of stepping stones for crossing the river. The operator of the future café on the site had no high requirements for the building area – the space could be accommodated within the footprint of the existing public toilet. This left the remaining outdoor area as the focus of our concept.

First, let’s look at the canopy. Pebbles serve as the structural foundation for the canopies rented out by the villagers. For the “The Grand Canopy”, we decided to use the main structure of the toilet: four partition walls were built to enclose 8 structural columns, forming the higher foundation on one side of the canopy. On the side of the existing dam, four corresponding low piers were built to form the foundation on the other side. Cables were strung between these two foundations – one high, one low, one north, one south – to complete the structural construction of the canopy.

In the sweltering summer, the canopy is unfolded to welcome tourists; during typhoons or rainy days, it is retracted to ensure safety; in the off-seasons of autumn and winter, it is taken down to facilitate maintenance – and there is no need to apply for additional construction quotas. This flexible construction and operation logic takes from the site and gives back to the site. Next, let’s look at the ground landscape. After meeting the requirements of the river’s blue line setback and water conservancy elevation, we designed the ground projection area of the canopy as the starting point for accessing the stepping stones – an enlarged riverbank platform that acts like a “bridgehead”, accommodating crowds gathering and water-based activities.

Text provided by the architects.

Modular timber construction was the natural choice for this project. The school was built by assembling prefabricated elements, allowing for rapid assembly and leaving the possibility of dismantling, reconfiguration or recycling with minimal waste. The prefabricated wooden pavilion rests delicately on masonry bases, which allow
the structure to be raised slightly and ensure optimal ventilation. The heating system is integrated directly into the floor elements. The prefabricated wooden walls, which have fire-retardant properties, delimit the classroom spaces around the central core.
The structure is reinforced by a system of solid wooden posts and slender metal posts supporting the eaves along the edge of the covered gallery.

The large glass façades provide a direct visual connection to the park and a quality of light that is favourable for classroom activities. Each room has dual orientation and direct access to the outside. The gallery surrounding the building provide a buffer zone with the outside and form effective sunshades to prevent overheating during periods of high heat. Despite its temporary nature, the pavilion offers high-quality, comfortable teaching spaces that comply with current standards.

This project was carried out thanks to close collaboration between the project owner, the architect and partner contractors. Smooth communication and coordination between the various parties involved enabled this ambitious project to be completed within a very short timeframe. The speed of design and construction, with two months of construction work for each floor, made it possible to address the saturation of existing school facilities and growing demographic pressure.

Text provided by the architects.

Progressing into the interior of the building, the spaces begin to fit together, enclosing themselves to the surroundings, between environments and spaces that invite silence and introspection. Central to the spatial organization – the atrium/waiting room – functions as a lounge space, but also as a distribution area between the public program (restrooms, kitchenette, and chapels) and the service program (storage, technical areas, and area dedicated to the worship leader).

In the chapels, the light traverses the space differently throughout the day, every day of the year. The door-opening system and the proposed furniture allow for the maximum number of seated users and, with the union of the two chapels, differentiated ceremonies.

Just as in local vernacular constructions, it can be asserted that the new building will always be a consequence of the place, seeking to activate and promote, in parallel, the small local economies through the use of the existing stone on-site, wood, and the use of white color in contrast to schist, in order to preserve the collective constructive memory, contributing to the maintenance of the construction culture of Alentejo and, specifically, of Barrancos, allowing the new building to “be built with the landscape.”

Text provided by the architects.

Prefabricated Plugin units are installed directly onto existing floors without altering the original structures. Lightweight, insulated, and self-contained, these units offer year-round comfort while maintaining the spatial logic and material integrity of the buildings. Timber frames, brick walls, and tiled roofs remain untouched.
At Courtyard C34, three artists share a triangular site comprising two porcelain workshops and two small dwellings. One structure becomes a communal kitchen, while the others house individual Plugin configurations combining sleeping, working, and bathroom spaces. Sloped roofs and integrated HVAC systems respond to daylight and climate conditions. In Courtyard H20, a single artist inhabits a studio fitted with a mezzanine bedroom, flexible workspace, and openable façades that reconnect interior and courtyard. Courtyard P58 accommodates three artist studios within a long workshop, each with a ground-floor office and a sleeping loft above. A neighboring building is reimagined as a public gallery and gathering space, with a zig-zag layout that balances openness and privacy. At Yanghua Lane, a newly built café anchors a courtyard framed by three historic studios and an L-shaped residence. Multiple Plugin units support group residencies and collaborative use, forming a micro-community embedded within the historic district.

Across all four sites, the Plugin system adapts to diverse spatial conditions while maintaining a coherent architectural language. Its prefabricated modular panel system allows for variation in size, material, and detailing, accommodating irregular geometries and evolving programmatic needs. The result is a family of interventions that are distinct yet cohesive, responsive to their contexts while clearly part of a unified strategy.

While earlier work in the district introduced a civic landmark and public gathering space, this phase extends the transformation into the neighborhood’s interiors, activating underused spaces and stitching new life into the rhythms of daily activity. By working within the architectural grain of Jingdezhen’s porcelain heritage, Porcelain Studios Plugin Revival offers a replicable and respectful model for architectural reuse, one that fosters continuity between making, living, and memory.

Text provided by the architects.