The Bailly School Complex
Mikou Design Studio
Saint Denis France
2009
The Bailly School Complex is an educational center for pre-schoolers, elementary students, and also plays home to a recreation center. The colorful outer facade makes for a very welcoming place for young children. It appears as a very playful environment, and no doubt helps to make young children want to go to school there. The structure is very modern, and the colorful awnings make the building seem very open. This could possibly be a hint at the curriculum of the school, suggesting that they take a more modern approach to education and are very open to new ideas and creativity. The steel and glass exterior also aid in this modern and open appearance. With the sharp edges and thick lines, the building appears to have a lot of tension but is softened up with the glass walls and colorful awnings.
While I couldn't find any information about the curriculum of the Bailly School, the distribution of the rooms throughout the building suggests possible ideas. The blue blocks in the picture above are those of preschool classrooms, the green are elementary, the yellow are general 'special' classrooms (arts, music, etc.), and the pink is the cafeteria. The way the elementary and preschool classrooms suggest that the schools want inter-mingling of the two different ages of children by putting them in the same hallways. However, they still make clear that there is a divide between the two by putting preschool on one side and elementary on the other. Also, by separating the general arts classrooms it perhaps shows the the Bailly school puts a clear division between classes for the arts and generally more 'formal' classrooms. In addition, though not shown in this floor plan, the mere existence of an entire recreation center in this school shows that they put a high emphasis on physical activity and giving the children time to play around and exercise.
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