Lomme, France

House of the little Childhood

The “House of the little Childhood” in Lomme is a public building destinated to it’s neighborhood.

The major question is those of the building’s scale: it has to respond to the cildrens’ scale as well as to the scale of the accompanying adults. It has to fit the individual as well as the group and it has to suit the scale of the entire neighborhood.

The house of the little Childhood is destinated to the awakening of the childrens’ senses. The proposed project searches to assume it’s role in this context: it’s materials, colours and different luminous ambiances make it become a tool in the sensorial development of the very young children.

The project is like a miracle-box: sober and protective on it’s outside; there is a multitude of spaces and ambiances to be discovered inside.

The declination of scales is reflected by the work on the facades: while the private places are spaces of intimity and thereby protected from all kind of views, the living spaces open widely on the gardens. The buildings skin of steel is perforated following the graphical pattern of the luminous necessities of the inside spaces. The house of the little childhood in Lomme is equipment specially dedicated to the infant. It is composed of three day-care units, a centre of mother-and-child-care and administration and services such as a kitchen and it’s service courtyard.

The site dedicated to this equipment is situated in a small town on the east of Lille in the north of France. The direct neighbourhood is in the state of urban transformation due to the destruction of a former factory of carpentry in an urban context of row-houses. In the large sector of urban transformation the house of the little childhood is the first element; other equipments such as a cultural centre and an office- and multipurpose-building will follow and reintegrate the formerly industrial site.

In this context of the future and the existing fabric, the house of the little childhood takes a special place: it’s program and size enable it to assure the transition of the scale of the environing housing to the future equipments: The house of the little childhood is by it’s program an equipment tightly linked to the housing and it’s habitants and by it’s status of public service it may respond to an urban scale.

The project occupies the entity of it’s site on one only level. This level integrates the entire program and the exterior spaces – gardens, patios, courtyards – inside of it’s grip, inside of on unitary skin. While the interior spaces search for a maximum of light and lightness in order to create a neutral scene where the infants’ activities may deploy all it’s colours, the exterior skin makes allusions to the urban context and history as well by it’s colour – brown-red in honour to red brick tradition in northern France – as by it’s materiality – rusty-steel-cladding in honour to the industrial history of the site.

The house of the little childhood carries the infants’ universe in a skin of site-relevant references. We consider it therefore plainly dedicated to its’ users and it’s neighbourhood.

team members:
Colboc Franzen Associates (architect)
Partners: Benjamin Colboc, Manuela Franzen, Arnaud Sachet,
Project manager: Géraud Pin-Barras,
Project assistants: Julien Boulley, Theo Riboud, Aesa Windels
BETHAC (technology & environmental planning),
IBAT (structure),
MET-BAT (economie)

Europaconcorsi Beta

House of the little Childhood