Ancienne école maternelle Achard

English translation

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History

The former Achard kindergarten to the north of the centre-bourg of Bagnères-de-Bigorre, on the road to Tarbes, was built in the early 1950s at the same time as the neighbouring secondary school. The town acquired the Achard château (or villa Achard or villa Amélie) on 29 June 1944, which was built by merchant Marc Achard according to a project by the departmental architect Prosper around the 1880s. It was enlarged between 1912 and 1915 by the architects Bauhain and Barbaud (SIAF/Cité de l'architecture et du patrimoine/Archives d'architecture du XXe siècle, Fonds Bauhain, Edouard J.-P. (1864-1930) and Barbaud Georges Raymond (1860-1927). 526 AP.). Before 1944, part of the property's land appears to have been sold to form a housing development. The Achard château presented itself as a fine building of three storeys and basement according to the municipal council, assigned to the Red Cross with a rest centre for North African indigenous peoples between 1944 and February 1946. The building was subsequently refitted to accommodate the boarding school of the secondary school for girls in summer 1946. Between 1951 and 1955, a school complex was built by Parisian architect A. Blanc around the villa. The Blanche-Odin secondary school is still located there today. On the other side of rue Joseph Meynier, the municipality built the kindergarten between 1951 and 1955 by the architects Yves Vieulet, Yves Cansot and Marty. Yves Cansot is the author of several schools in Hautes-Pyrénées, those of Estaing, Argelès-Gazost and Trébons. Yves Vieulet (1920-1985) obtained his DPLG architect's diploma in 1947 and set up his practice in Toulouse. The Achard kindergarten retained a school use until 2018. The commune regularly loses posts in its schools, with a decline in the number of dwellings (11,044 inhabitants in 1954 and 7,103 in 2018). The numbers at Achard and Carnot schools were combined in the former primary school of Pic du Midi. The Achard school became a community centre, one of whose associations is Les Amis du Marbre. This association contributes to a better understanding of marble and to the promotion of the associated heritage, in connection with enriching the collections of the Musée du Marbre de Salut. Bagnères-de-Bigorre, a spa town, is also known as the 'Athens of the Pyrenees' for its marble quarries, exploited by the Romans and reactivated in the 17th century by Louis XIV and Colbert. They supplied marbles rich in colour. The Achard kindergarten has the particularity of being clad with marble plate cladding on its façade, from the reuse of a wall of the former Cantet marble works established in Bagnères-de-Bigorre (now assigned to municipal technical services). The Achard school constituted one of the stages of visits during the Marble days organised in October 2020 by the association.

Description

The school is located on a corner plot, facing the secondary school, on rue Joseph-Meynier and on a lane leading to the stadium and several residential houses. It presents itself as a massive building, with an L-shaped plan, on a ground floor raised six steps above street level. The L-shape opens to the south onto the playground. At the corner of the streets, the L-shape is doubled by the flights of steps leading to the entrance vestibule with three double doors (on the lane) and by the sanitary facilities (on the street). At the junction of the two wings, an entrance hall, associated with the director's office, equipped with fixed joinery and a door allowing supervision of entrances/exits and easy circulation. The hall extends into a physical activity and movement hall (used during recreation in bad weather) in the wing along the lane and concludes with a rotunda. The second wing houses a corridor distributing three classrooms and a dormitory. It is lit by high band windows. Fixed wooden joinery is also positioned between the corridor and classrooms for supplementary lighting of the spaces. Large glazed metal frames open the classrooms and physical activity hall onto the playground. In the classrooms, they are designed on a sill approximately 60 cm high and fitted with a door for direct access to the playground. In the physical activity hall, these are glazed bays ensuring fluidity between interior and exterior in the recreation and physical activity spaces. The appearance of the building is contrasted between the façades facing the public space, sparsely opened, only by high continuous bands corresponding to corridors, sanitary facilities and physical activity hall, and the façades facing the playground, widely opened by large joinery assemblies. It should be noted that those of the rotunda adapt to the curve of the building. All façades have the same covering made of marble plates of varying dimensions and different colours. They preferably form horizontal courses, interrupted randomly by a plate laid vertically. The base of the street façades is formed of small gravel plates (mignonette). All openings are underlined by fine frames in concrete painted a light colour. On the playground side, these are completed by a glazed transom forming a short hood over the large bays, providing partial protection from the high summer sun. These horizontal concrete elements form continuous bands on the playground-facing façades. Horizontality is accentuated by the covering of marble plates predominantly in courses and the thick concrete cornice. The building is roofed with slate. The entrance is treated with a large flight of steps leading to three double doors individually underlined by thick concrete frames and united by a band of two glass blocks. The whole naturally lights the entrance lobby and entrance hall.