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Epilepsy Care Home - Laurent Noel - France
Epilepsy Care Home - Laurent Noel - France


A concrete parallelepiped whose walls are dotted with gentle hollows, the care home and long-stay living unit in Dommartin-lès-Touls (Meurthe-et-Moselle region) is an innovative programme with respect to epilepsy care. In this project, the Atelier Martel architects put everyday life and the sense of being “at home” at the top of their list of preoccupations, in a departure from conventional: healthcare and social welfare structures. Construction of the building involved major economic constraints that drove the architects to focus on the essentials. Located between green pastures and a business zone, the site obliged them to develop a project that stands as a signal, a strong form that is capable of existing in this landscape. The simple volume responds to its context through its square 60 x 60 metre plan, which establishes an object that has no front or back. While the form and dimensions may raise questions, use of regular apertures refers to the notion of inhabiting. Its unified, almost snow-like skin absorbs each ray of sunlight and marks the institution’s presence in its environment.

The building is single-storey and adopts a functional floor plan that limits the distances the nursing staff have to travel and allows for rational organisation of the living units. Beyond this aspect, it allows the residents—who are less likely to fall due to the absence of stairs—to use the corridors as a place to stroll and meet. Four open patios inside the square structure this interior world. Each features different dimensions, aspects and greenery, encouraging a multiplicity of practices and helping to make these spaces easier to identify. Designed with a layout devoid of cul-de-sacs that features streets, squares and housing, the care home refers to Alberti’s metaphor whereby “the city is like a large house and the house is in turn like a small city”. The fluidity and natural light present in all the circulations form a gentle dialectic between opening and protection. Modelled on a cloister design, the indoor and outdoor spaces are protected while simultaneously establishing a direct rapport with the surrounding nature and landscape, composed of fields, a monument and mountains beyond. This feeling of reassurance is reinforced by the thickness of the walls, which is revealed by the holes pierced in the concrete structural walls to create openings for the windows. The project displays great attention to detail, through the use of simple yet quality raw materials: windows and blinds are made of wood and the floors are soft to reduce the likelihood of patients hurting themselves if they fall.

Atelier Martel invited Mayanna von Ledebur to intervene very early on in the design process. In this way, the architectural work and the artist’s creation merge to serve the building. The artist worked on the meaning of a building devoted to epilepsy and how to make it exist without stigmatising the disease or its patients. Her intervention on the façade—which meant developing the mould with which the concrete could be engraved seeks to be a free interpretation of the inscriptions on Mesopotamian steles, which feature the first references to epilepsy in written history. A common material whose architectural expression refers to hardness, here the raw concrete is enriched, offering new sensorial experiences and turning into a sensual and tactile material that is round and soft. In an approach involving the artistic concept as much as touchand perception, the concave, almost “lunar” inscriptions change with the shifting sunlight and act as a trompe l’oeil. The artistic collaboration continues inside with work on the notion of bearings and landmarks, so that occupants rendered vulnerable by their fits can find their way without needing hospital signage. A long, 100-square-metre mural of coloured wool tapestry divided into panels brings life to the corridors. Located at the far ends of the interior gardens, these luminous pieces materialise the patients’ living areas. They feature hand-drawn forms and a motif interpreting a photograph of a nebulosity floating 6,000 metres above the home. Residents can thus find their bearings while keeping their head in the clouds.


Laurent Noel
Laurent Noel

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