The Maison de la Recherche Euroméditerranéenne and the Institut Ingémédia are strategically located at the heart of the Toulon Provence Méditerrannée urban area (TPM).
The building stands at the angle that marks the access viewpoint towards the Porte d’Italie, which is flanked by planted ramparts and stands as a symbolic image of the city entrance.
The urban project is based on a large pedestrian walk that serves the different university entities, the existing facilities, and the new Maison de la Recherche (Research Centre). This walk is connected to Place Bir-Hakeim—reconfigured in order to enable clear distinction between car flow, pedestrian pathways and the TCSP (reserved public transport area). The space freed up by vehicles is treated as an urban square, thus qualifying the entrance to the city. The area is spacious enough to enable either a mineral or a green treatment, which would fit in with sports fields while maintaining continuity with the walk and framing the view of the Porte d’Italie.
The “Maison de la Recherche-Institut Ingémédia” complex is composed of a base surmounted by detached blocks standing above it: three identical white volumes pierced with large openings and topped with facetted roofs for natural ventilation.
The overall organisation is easily legible because the base and the blocks have different functions. The base houses the major volumes of the programme—the lecture hall and tiered conference halls—while the three blocks function autonomously, housing the shared classrooms, Ingémédia and the research facilities respectively.
The façade facing the mall and the Esplanade d’Italie is very active on the ground floor, featuring a bar, the students’ hall, the general hall shared by the various university entities, the access to the great lecture hall, and a series of terraces…
To avoid creating a heavy visual impact, the Maison de la Recherche and the Institut Ingémédia are fractioned into a hybrid complex that confers a human scale on what is actually a large-scale, dense and ambitious programme.