Ecca collection

City Hall Gauchy

Should you choose to get married in the town of Gauchy en Vermandois, in the Picardy region of France near the Belgian border, you may find yourself a little distracted while taking your vows. Architect Dubosc & Associes has carefully sited the city hall so that the marriage room enjoys spectacular views across the valley. This is calming, one hopes, for tattered nerves rather than a distraction for anyone who is wondering if they have made the right decision.

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Two Housing Blocks

The housing designed by Dubosc & Associes in Montargis, France, is certainly uncompromising. Clad entirely in metal, it eschews any of the conventional domestic touches but it does so in a manner that is refreshing and bright. The only punctuation to the neutral metallic colour comes from the front doors in a cheerful red, with large painted numbers, and sensibly generous vision panels. There is no chance here of forgetting where you live, and the sloping external staircases are both inviting and, argues Eric Dubosc, important places of social interaction. ‘People never talk on internal staircases,’ he says. ‘Here they are out of doors, so they talk and their children play together.’

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School Het Perron

Educational theories seem to be one of the fastest changing areas of modern life, as educators struggle to help young people fit themselves to our evolving and challenging world. How then can an architect design a building that will stand for at least 30 years, and accommodate change of which we have not even dreamed?

Images courtesy of ZEEP architecten Amersfoort, Sigrid Schaap, Mark van den Boorn

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