Du Bosquet High School

Discipline : Architecture

Categories : Public Building / School & Preschool Education Building : Grand Winner

Categories : Special Award / Architecture + Aluminium : Grand Winner

Categories : Special Award / Architecture + Landscape : Gold certification

Located in Drummondville in the Saint-Nicéphore sector, on the edge of a woodland that largely guided the architectural design, the new Du Bosquet High School offers students a particularly inspiring place.

When approaching this school project that borders a large woodland, nature, specifically the forest, emerged as the anchor point of the concept. The primary architectural intention was to let the woodland take center stage, the lead role: the forest interweaves into the project, the new school becomes one with nature, is permeated with the essence of the site. Thus, the shape of the plan allowed for arranging a series of spaces on the ground floor that wrap around the preserved woodland. The areas forming the heart of the project (entrance hall, atrium, auditorium, cafeteria) as well as the circulation areas of the sports zone and the gym extend along the woodland. As a result, these spaces benefit from generous light and views of the lush nature.

To accentuate this special relationship with nature, the volumetry was composed to recall the stratification of the territory. The materiality, for its part, combines both transparency and vertical reliefs, evoking the interplay of solid and void at the forest edge. Indeed, the use of aluminum brought a lot of flexibility in the design, leveraging its folding capability to create three-dimensional facades which, alternating with smooth facades, create depth, rhythm, and a play of textures, shadow, and light that energize the whole. This use of aluminum promotes the expression of nature in the project, articulates a sensitive response to the woodland, and transcribes the language of the forest at the building scale by adopting and using its vocabulary.

A school in the forest

The school is in relationship with nature, with the grandeur and splendor of the forest. Right from the entrance, the user is in the forest: the biophilic hub, the signature space of the school, and the wooden bleachers create a unifying public space, opening perspectives and affirming the omnipresence of nature within the project. On the second level, this architectural journey continues, including an auditorium and a central circulation in front of the library, vast and luminous.

Voluminous glass facade sections combined with the integration of sunshades on bronze-colored aluminum panels, matched to the shades of the woodland, subtly express the filtered and comforting light piercing through the canopy.

As for the abundantly vegetated outdoor spaces, they present as an echo of the adjacent woodland: from the public plaza in front of the school to the inner courtyard, through a wide tiered opening between the sports complex and the main volume, everything is interconnected, embedded, enveloped in nature. Within this environment, the school and the forest become one.

The project in images