Architecture doesn’t teach. And yet physical space can be a powerful tool for encouraging new forms of education and socialisation. The architects at RAUM, a firm based in Nantes, have experienced this first-hand. Since 2009, when designing different types of learning spaces—primary, art, music and dance schools as well as a municipal aquatic centre—they have been questioning the spatial arrangements and constructive conditions necessary for sharing knowledge and experimentation. These are all opportunities to explore the capacity of architectural objects to interact with contemporary space.
Presented at arc en rêve from 17 June to 26 October, the exhibition Class struggle, architectures and learning situations presents the work of the RAUM studio in the specific field of teaching, production and artistic dissemination. To coincide with the construction of the new building for the Paris-Cergy Arts School, the exhibition raises the question of ‘what architecture can do’ in the field of education, and features seven of the studio’s projects. A selection of models, fragments and prototypes offers a way of reading architecture through the different relationships it establishes: with other disciplines, with the context, with the climate and with resources.
In this approach, architects see a twofold struggle. On the one hand, they note the increasingly marked displacement of learning processes outside the traditional classroom space. On the other, they defend architecture as a committed practice. This stance is all the more courageous in a contemporary context where the subjectivity of opinions seems to have overwhelmed all critical space. Including that of architecture itself.
Founded in Nantes in 2009 by Julien Perraud, Benjamin Boré and Thomas Durand, architecture office RAUM is developing research and experimentation into ways of living in the contemporary world. In the sixteen years of its career, the agency has notably signed the renovation and extension of a community swimming pool in Saint-Méen-Le-Grand (35) in 2023, the Alice-Guy school complex in Nantes in 2022, the Pierres Blanches cultural centre in Saint-Jean-de-Boiseau (44) in 2019 and the Le Pont Supérieur conservatory and performing arts centre in Nantes in 2015. The studio’s work has won awards including the AJAP 2010, the Prix de la Première œuvre 2010, the Équerre d’argent in 2019 and 2022, and the Médaille d’architecture - Prix Dejean, awarded by the Académie d’architecture, in 2024. The studio is currently working on the design of the new building for the Paris-Cergy Arts School and the future Bougainville swimming pool in Marseille.