Laurens & Loustau Architectes

ITEP Le Home

ITEP LE HOME

Laurens & Loustau Architects

ITEP Le Home
© Stéphane Chalmeau

ARCHITECTS
Laurens & Loustau Architectes

PHOTOGRAPHS
Stéphane Chalmeau

AREA
883.0 m²

YEAR
2012

LOCATION
Toulouse, France

CATEGORY
Educational Architecture

ITEP Le Home
© Stéphane Chalmeau
ITEP Le Home
© Stéphane Chalmeau
ITEP Le Home
© Stéphane Chalmeau

Text description provided by architect.

APEAJ educational and learning youth association is a nondenominational organism which caters, in Toulouse’s urban area, for children with behavior and personality disorders or young people affected by mild intellectual handicap.

Accessible by the Glacière dead end, the project’s plot is surrounded by a cars pound, a road hauler, a technical test center and cars retail.

ITEP Le Home
© Stéphane Chalmeau
ITEP Le Home
© Stéphane Chalmeau

The will of the client was to build on this site a “containing” architecture that could be healing and where children could remember and seize a comforting world, close to the familiar atmosphere of the house.

The program called for three independent units, each one catering for groups of children with distinct pathologies.

These units made up of a living room with a kitchen, a private room and an educational desk had to reproduce a familial context.

ITEP Le Home
© Stéphane Chalmeau
ITEP Le Home
© Stéphane Chalmeau
ITEP Le Home
© Stéphane Chalmeau

The other programmatic requirements were the educational activities premises, technical workshops and a “gymnasium”. 

The institution also had to own a therapeutic section with psychiatrists’ and social workers’ offices.

Finally, the program provides for administration offices and technical premises.

ITEP Le Home
© Stéphane Chalmeau
ITEP Le Home
© Stéphane Chalmeau

Leaving the classic outlines of French schools –playground surrounded by buildings (in order to keep a better watch on it…), the project tends to isolate the main functions to make them identifiable by independent and distinct buildings.

The plot is denser and the gaps between them result richer, blotting out the idea of “institution” in favor of the definition of the “hamlet”. 

ITEP Le Home
© Stéphane Chalmeau
ITEP Le Home
© Stéphane Chalmeau

Rediscovering the spirit of the lost suburbs, each unit has a playground and a covered courtyard but composes with the other ones a clear whole.

In the middle of a heterogeneous and mixed-use landscape, in its organization, the new educational therapeutic institute ITEP refuses to produce a new style, form or scale, just referring to those ones already existing in the urban history of this territory.

ITEP Le Home
© Stéphane Chalmeau


ITEP Le Home
© Stéphane Chalmeau
ITEP Le Home
© Stéphane Chalmeau


ITEP Le Home
Elevations
ITEP Le Home
Section 02
ITEP Le Home
Situation Plan
ITEP Le Home
Site Plan


ITEP Le Home
Ground Floor Plan
ITEP Le Home
Floor Plan
ITEP Le Home
Second Floor Plan
ITEP Le Home
Aerial View

ITEP Le Home

Laurens & Loustau Architectes
T +33 5 61639067 F +33 5 61639068
Laurens & Loustau Architectes
16 Rue Caraman, 31000 Toulouse, France