Palais de l’Alma, rammed earth for daycare center in Paris

Régis Roudil Architectes have built a daycare center for 24 children in the garden of the Palais de l’Alma in Paris. It is characterized by its sustainable construction method as well as its close relationship to the tree-lined outdoor space. Solid walls made of rammed earth are combined with transparent areas in a slender timber construction. The building thus conveys a sense of security and openness at the same time and underlines the peaceful impression of this urban oasis.

The Palais de l’Alma in the 7th arrondissement is a historic ensemble from the 19th century, with a main building, side wings and the former stables. Located in an illustrious neighborhood between the Musée du Quai Branly and the Russian Orthodox Cathedral, it serves as the administrative headquarters of the Office of the President. A new company nursery recently opened in the tree-lined garden, offering 24 nursery places for employees’ children. Between the representative solitaires, the new building is architecturally restrained and creates a scale appropriate to the children. Hidden behind the high wall on the southern edge of the site, the green roof with its curved top barely peeks out. It was important to the architect Régis Roudil to respect the architectural heritage and to preserve the introverted garden as a green oasis in the urban texture and to build on this with the daycare center.

This was also the basic idea behind the materiality of wood and clay, which references nature and reflects the garden – and at the same time meets the client’s ambitious goals for resource-conserving, ecological construction methods. The rammed earth, a purely natural product, forms the anchor point, as it were, for the elongated, single-storey new building. Like two risalits, the solid ends of the building on the east and west sides frame the glazed central section. They consist of rammed earth walls that enclose the adjoining rooms behind them in a U-shape. The central section is formed by slender columns and beams made of spruce and Douglas fir. This is where the entrance, the staff rooms and the heart of the crèche – the play area – open out onto the terrace and the garden with floor-to-ceiling glazing and sliding windows. Cubes with timber and glass partitions are inserted in between to accommodate the bedrooms and toilets.

The interior of Régis Roudil’s daycare centre is characterized by the contrast between the introverted cubes and the transparent, light-flooded areas. In addition, the convex roof attachment not only allows an abundance of skylight to flow in, but also provides natural ventilation. Custom-made built-in wooden furniture, the clay plaster of the opaque walls and the cork flooring ensure a calm spatial impression and a warm feel. The external appearance is very attractive thanks to the contrast between the heavy earthen wall and the transparent central section, conveying a sense of security and openness at the same time. The slender wooden profiles of the beams also give the building a clear structure and purist elegance. Due to the visible, enclosed stones, the surface of the rammed earth harmonizes well with the coarse plaster of the historic façades and the rough texture of the garden walls. This creates a further subtle reference to the context.

Read more: Architecture studio De Zwarte Hond has built a school on the scale of children in Midden-Groningen.