Montpellier: these students raise the Ensam flag high for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games

Le quatuor devant une évocation du pavillon et son modèle réduit. Midi Libre – codo

Étudiantes en cinquième année à l’École nationale supérieure d’architecture de Montpellier, elles ont planché sur un projet retenu pour la fédération de skate et de roller.

There are four of them (Pénélope Puech, Ornella Kerrels, Éloïse Ferro, Anaïs Correard), all students in their fifth (and final) year at the Montpellier National School of Architecture (Ensam ). And were selected to create the future pavilion of the skate and roller federation as part of the next Olympic Games.

Because like eighteen other schools (plus the Reunion branch of the Montpellier school), their project is part of the Archi-Folies program. Which was entrusted to certain architecture schools to design the pavilions for the different disciplines. And which will be installed in the La Villette park for the duration of the games, including the Paralympics of course.

This order from the Ministry of Culture, the local quartet decided to imagine it based on sustainable because reusable materials. "It’was obvious", says Pénélope Puech. Result: their construction uses classic scaffolding for the structure, combined with netting for the envelope on which videos of athletes in action will be projected.

Small school, big ambitions

Directed for two years now by Thierry Verdier (he had already been at its head fifteen years previously), Ensam, "a small school",  is changing scale. After the rehabilitation of its facades (Rehab XX), it became involved in several research and development programs (Miranda project as part of France 2030). If 70% of the seven hundred students are young women, Thierry Verdier wishes to “feminize the teaching staff” to stick to this reality. Another announcement: the transformation of the antenna installed on the island of Reunion into a full-fledged school, probably "for 2025", specifies Thierry Verdier. Which underlines "the colossal commitment" of students in the various programs carried out.

Work carried out together
with engineers from Altrad

Working in close collaboration with engineers from the Altrad group, "to combine the technical side and the artistic aspect", the project leaders have been working on their realization for over a year already, supported by school teachers.

A useful aid to help you stay within the defined framework. Or the creation of a cube "ten meters by ten and ten meters high costing a maximum of twenty-five thousand euros", summarize the interested parties. And designed to be reused or recycled.

Today definitively frozen, the concept has entered a technical phase and is 70% complete. Then, from mid-May, head to Paris to begin construction of the structure.
But in fact: why design a pavilion for the roller federation ? "It’s the ministry which chose. And here, with the International Festival of Extreme Sports (Fise). The obvious.

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