Jean Rostand is primary school at the edge of a park in the urban center of Bourgoin-Jallieu, France.

For centuries the inhabitants of Rhône-Alpes region have found that their soil and stone were perfectly adapted to building construction. This material culture led to a shared architectural language, or “vernacular” in which primary structures like civic buildings and houses were built in limestone masonry and secondary structures like barns and workshops in rammed-earth. Beginning with the industrial revolution, the region has become synonymous with the (re)invention of industrial concrete and thus the waning of the “savoir-faire” to build with natural geo-sourced materials. Now, after more than 100 years of ubiquitous concrete production, the Jean Rostand Primary School project reintroduces and reinvents the inherent sustainability of locally sourced, simply transformed earth and stone for contemporary application, and in particular, shares the reconstruction of this regional heritage with the youngest citizens.

At the scale of the school, the project is a dining hall extension, a group of 6 boxes: 3 limestone “Living Boxes” and 3 rammed-earth “Service Boxes”. The interstitial spaces are covered with a low-slung timber canopy to create places for dining (as opposed to a “hall”). The boxes are carved on their outer faces and corners to create niches, allowing children to choose to gather in gradients of social intimacy.

At the scale of the city, the project is an urban in-fill which belongs at once to the school courtyard, to the public park and to the surrounding residential mid-rise towers. On the courtyard side, operable full-height glass doors blur the line between meals and recreation. On the park side, the earth and stone boxes knit the building into the natural landscape of mature deciduous trees. On the residential side, the towers prospect over a lushly vegetated roofscape.