2019 – Toulouse School of Economics, France

Selected design after an architectural competition in 2009. The building is fragmented into two ‘bars’ that are 10.8 m deep, allowing natural air, light, and ventilation to each office. This arrangement generates permeable spaces that connect with the existing fabric of the area. The building is completed with austere finishes in concrete and brick. The latter came from a nearby factory where bricks were still made in practically identical ways as the Romans had made them.

“For us, Toulouse is a city of bridges, quay walls, city walls, ramps, promenades, brick buttresses, brick and stone towers, mysterious cool interiors and cloisters, archways and courtyards. The big space of the meandering Garonne provides the wide horizon, the sense of connection with the landscape beyond. The linear manmade, tree-lined canal cuts through the city and sets up framed , axial, linear spaces . Historically and intellectually, Universities are the life-blood of Toulouse. We have made a composition of the re-interpreted elements of Toulouse: the buttresses, the walls, the ramps, the cool mysterious interiors, the cloisters and the courtyards.”
Grafton Architects

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