How to design space for those who study how to design space? Émilieu Studio was given the challenge by École Camondo, design school of the Musée des Arts-Décoratifs of Paris, to design and build the interior of their new school in Toulon, Provence. 

Sustainability being the very DNA of Émilieu Studio's design and the most important concern for the up-and-coming generation of designers, the interior is made out of 90% reused and/or reusable material. It also is the opportunity to explore the transformative and performative power of space and design: through space, we learn. Modularity, abolition of the interior/exterior frontier and practical approaches of environmental sciences are the guidelines of this highly innovative design project. 

This new way of teaching space design embodies pedagogy in a practical area. Choice was made to root the school in its Mediterranean territory and embrace the local interior/exterior continuum by creating an open and movable school. The furniture stems from a custom standard, the trolley, creating a fully interoperable and transportable system for modulating any piece of furniture the students would need. The combinable and entirely custom system of flat surface, vertical surface, seat, is made out of outdoor-proof material (reused marine plywood and sails from local shipyards and factories), enabling any outdoor project and the exploration of local crafts. 

The surfaces are enhanced by biobased inlays, like black cork. 90% of the materials are hence both fully reused and/or reusable. Daily needs are at the core of the conception, including trash cans with a weight system, pockets for documents sewed in the cushions or trestles storage space. The school’s interior is a scale one playground, enabling exploration on all axes, like the technical grille on the ceilings of both 1000 m² floors; the movable partitions; or the entirely modular furniture. 

Every design choice becomes a learning surface, making the school a moving landscape of exploration. Supporting environmental science, 2.4 m x 2.4 m detailed maps of various scaling (from neighboring territory to Mediterranean scale) ornate the interior and are fully annotable for better collaboration. The school is as much a matrix of multiple potentialities as it is a product of its environment. There is no Camondo sign at the entrance, all the eye can see are the maps. The territory is the school. Pushing forward a manifest for ecological pedagogy, Emilieu Studio also innovated in upcycling techniques and dared to rehabilitate faux. 

One of the challenges was to come out with rehabilitation techniques for enhancing reused material. Choice was made to paint a series of large modular pieces of furniture with trompe l’oeil of rare, rich and elegant minerals of the region. This avoids extractivism of rare materials and builds a learning space displaying a scale 1 library of minerals. 

Emilieu Studio goes back to the fundamentals of ecology and pedagogy: widening the perspectives and innovating. Be it by furnishing a 2000 m² school site exclusively with 90% reused and/or reusable material from the cushions to the kitchen, or using faux.