Groupe scolaire Paul-Baratgin

English translation

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History

The Paul Baratgin primary school is located south-west of the town centre in a district that was still little urbanised at the beginning of the 1950s. The plot, dedicated to market gardening, is situated between rue Thiers, which crosses the village from north to south and the former national road 117 (rue Georges-Clémenceau today). With the construction of the school in 1951-52, it was also the public roads that had to be built and serviced in this new urban development. An avenue was planned in the north-south direction and a street east-west. The school was installed on a corner plot, narrower on the avenue and stretched on the new street, in depth. The land presented a slight slope, rising from the avenue towards the back of the plot. The adjoining location of the future school was reserved for building a boys' school, which was never realised. The plans for the project are dated October 1949 for a total of works estimated at 107,640,415 francs. The restricted tender took place on 20 May 1950. The selected company was the Toulouse-based company Pins frères, fils et gendre, which had submitted the most advantageous offer among those of the Société des grands travaux du Sud-ouest, Delfour et Bisseuil, René Marion, Castells frères, Lafond, Miglietti et Banino, Besques et Chabosson, Antin et compagnie, and Laruelle et compagnie. The date for completion of works was set at 21 July 1952. At the initiative of the construction of the new school facility, the mayor Paul Baratgin (1890-1966) had been elected in 1929. After growing up in Lannemezan, he replaced his father as a doctor in the chief town, then entered politics in 1925 as a municipal councillor, general councillor of the canton and president of the general council of the Hautes-Pyrénées in 1945 for the radical socialist party list. The new school moreover took the name "Edouard Herriot school" at its inauguration, and became "Paul Baratgin school" at the death of the latter in 1966. He was also involved in the construction of the asile de la demi-lune, a vast psychiatric hospital, the project for which had been entrusted to architects Noël Lemaresquier and Jean-Louis Gilet at the end of the 1930s. Furthermore, with the establishment of industries, the arsenal and a barracks after the First and Second World Wars, Lannemezan experienced significant demographic growth. From 2,529 inhabitants in 1936, the population rose to 5,308 inhabitants in 1954, then reached its peak in 1975 with 8,385 inhabitants. Since then, the curve has reversed, reaching in 2018 a number close to that of the 1950s. It is in this context that the project for the new school was presented. It was entrusted to the Parisian architect Noël Lemaresquier, associated this time with the Toulouse architect Paul de Noyers. Son of architect and workshop patron Charles Lemaresquier, Noël Lemaresquier (1903-1982) obtained the Grand Prix de Rome in 1930. He directed the regional school of architecture in Toulouse from 1944 and taught at the école nationale des Beaux-arts from 1953 to 1974. He took over his father's practice from 1945, became architect-in-chief of civil buildings and national palaces in 1954. He signed numerous projects in Toulouse associated with Paul de Noyers: faculty of medicine, CHU de Rangueil, faculty of social sciences, Monoprix store, veterinary school. Paul de Noyers (1911-2006), student at the school of Beaux-arts in Toulouse, then in the workshop of Charles Lemaresquier in Paris, was graduated in 1937, then competed for the Grand Prix de Rome. Interrupted by the war, he began his career in Toulouse in 1941. He was a professor of architecture from 1947 to 1968 at the regional school of architecture in Toulouse.

Description

The project for a girls' school and nursery school proposes an extensive programme, broken down into several buildings: a large school building comprising ten classrooms and a playground for the girls, a playground for the nursery children, a building of ten dwellings for the headmistress and teachers, associated with a building of five garages and laundries and a caretaker's building, serving as an entrance pavilion. The composition in mass plan is controlled in the positioning of the buildings on the plot, in relation to each other, and in relation to public roads, in the design of open spaces, gardens, plantings, pergolas and recreation yards, bounded by rendered concrete cornices and concrete lattice screens. The school building is positioned at a right angle along the northern boundary of the plot, opening onto a vast recreation yard, oriented to the south and bounded on the street by a fence, punctuated by the nursery playground. The return wing, housing the girls' playground, forms the articulation with the residential building. The latter asserts its urban character by positioning itself slightly set back from the street, embellished with ornamental gardens at the base of the façade. Thus positioned, the building preserves a large planted space at the rear. The garages are set against the north-western plot boundary. The school building and recreation yard are divided into two entities: the nursery school, at the corner of public roads and the girls' school following on. From the new projected avenue, the buildings are set back creating lawns with trees of varying size. Only the school building emerges in alignment with the road, with a rotunda. The caretaker's pavilion and entrance is positioned as a counterpoint. The entrance is marked by an overhanging cornice and an ironwork grille. Entrance and school building are connected by an awning supported by a succession of pillars whose bays are filled with concrete lattice screens with square grid motifs and forming a filter between public space and school space. The same design is repeated for the portico which separates the nursery recreation yard from that of the girls. The part of the school building assigned to the nursery consists of three pavilions. The first is dedicated to post-school education, installed in the rotunda, and to the offices of the two headmistresses. Today, the three rooms form only one, used as a motor skills room. Then, the two other pavilions each contain two classrooms, the two rest rooms and associated sanitary facilities. An awning on concrete console provides sheltered circulation and also protects the classrooms from summer sunlight. The nursery recreation yard extends towards the south. It is bounded by a fence and row trees on the street and by a peripheral pathway protected by cornices and gallery, allowing protection of the children from the weather. The gallery connects the classrooms to the playground, offering a bench along its length, at the base of the lattice screen. The yard presents extensive landscape design, with lawns, tree plantings, crossed by wide direct connection pathways and secondary winding pathways. A pergola made of prefabricated concrete elements supporting vegetation and a sandpit embellished the play garden, now disappeared. The part of the school building assigned to the girls' school consists of three identical pavilions of two classrooms each, a practical work room (also used as a canteen) and a playground. Associated with the latter, the sanitary block and the doctor's office. In the same manner as on the nursery side, an awning on concrete console provides sheltered circulation and also protects the classrooms from summer sunlight. The vast recreation yard is associated with a teaching vegetable garden. The classroom pavilions are identical and are organised as follows. They are staggered in relation to each other to adapt to the slope of the ground. An entrance leads to a wide corridor made of low-height step ramps (slope of 10%), equipped on both sides with vertical wooden lockers, painted in forest green, intended to receive a coat on hooks and accessories on two shelves. This entrance corridor is naturally lit by a glazed door topped with an oculus. It leads to a room of octagonal plan equipped on the periphery with the same lockers, topped with large joinery. At the centre, a fountain faced with blue-green tesserae is positioned. From this octagonal vestibule, one finds on either side a sanitary block and a classroom. The sanitary facilities are lit and ventilated to the north while the classroom is widely open to the south by openings protected by an awning, with heavy metal sliding sash windows, and high tilting openings. The volume of the classroom was intended to be impressive with 4.50m of height to ceiling, reduced today by a suspended ceiling. This original composition presents a masterful hygienic solution for managing the flow of children's circulation from the yard, with the space to deposit clothing and various belongings, wash hands and reach the classroom. On foundations of formwork concrete, the external walls are of rendered rubble stone and the party walls provided either in rubble stone or concrete block. The floors are in reinforced concrete so as to be heating floors. The building is covered with a wood roof structure and slate roofing at a pitch of 45°. A suspended ceiling from the roof structure forms the volume of the classroom. The lattice screen is intended to be prefabricated on site with concrete mullions of section 5 cm by 8 cm, with square holes of 25 cm.