Clément Blanchet Architecture in collaboration with Paul Vincent, Olivier Caro, AIA, Orythie, and Sletec Ingénierie is pleased to reveal its proposal for the Polytechnique School. After Blanchet’s mandate at OMA France designing Centrale Engineering School, the office has been invited to be part of this international competition against Dominique Perrault, Saison Menu Architectes, Pascale Guedot, and Valero Gadan.

The project is the illustration of the concept of “poly-technic”. It is the concourse of different kinds of knowledge, all packaged in a comprehensive and efficient system.

It defines a system that offers a collective identity and combines together the units or autonomous functional universes. It is an effective and flexible machine, where the technique is sublimated. We combined an architectural device (the servant colonnade) grouping all the technical functions into a sustainable infrastructure.

It is the main frame which allows efficiency and changes in the optimum time. The project has no pre-defined formal intention, it follows the functional and technical demands of the program. The result of the project will potentially become the aesthetic of science.
The objectives of the project reflect the essence of the acclaimed institution that is the Polytechnique: flexibility, efficiency, versatility of uses, serendipity, maintenance and durability, compact size, scalability, diversity and unity.

The project is not an architectural form, but rather the implementation of an architectural process in which all users can participate. It offers a scalable programmatic configuration. The module chosen 15m by 15m offers an infinite variety of configurations and uses from the scientific world of laboratories to the offices upstairs. This unique frame is organizing the general plan. All partitions, facades are removable.
This proposed universe is primarily the creation of a horizontal field in which each functional entity can exist in itself but can also interact with the others. The proposed structural solution highlights flexibility and arrangements between the programs. It is simple, robust and effective.

The project reunites different schools and proposes a participatory essence of a sustainable aesthetic, scientific and transparent. It is a flexible device that can realize a new efficiency for the Polytechnique, ENSTA and ONERA schools, seeking to sublimate the Poly phonic character of the art and science.