Vibrant facade design
The architect found a suitable material to implement his ideas and vision for the renovation in the glazed ceramic cladding made from our Argeton Barro baguettes. "The clarity of the glaze, its warmth, and the wide range of colours were what made me choose the Argeton Barro clay baguettes," explains Laurent Fournet.
Argeton was developed in the early 1980s as a ceramic panel element for back-ventilated curtain facades and has since stood for high-quality facade panels with a timelessly elegant aesthetic. In addition to their function as an architectural design element, the ceramic Argeton Barro clay baguettes with a square cross-section also serve as a privacy and sun screen. The glazed light- and UV-resistant baguettes are custom-made for each property and secured with a specially-designed mounting system.
For his École Simone Veil project, the architect Laurent Fournet chose the colours red, blue, yellow, pink, and purple – a colourful cladding design that evokes coloured crayons or books lined up on library shelves. The geometric pattern of the parallel arrangement of the facade design is broken up in a curve, which gives the aesthetics a dynamic vitality.
High-precision installation
A total of 7,000 Barro baguettes were used for the cladding. This demanding task was entrusted to Bruno Tassone and his son Tony from Tassone Batiment, who already had experience with Barro baguettes for a previous property. The facade elements are mounted piece by piece using a concealed system – precision work that required a great deal of care, as well as passion for the project on the part of Bruno Tassone and his team. "The big challenge with this project was the specific arrangement of the entire building, particularly due to the unusual shape of the facade," explains Bruno Tassone. “The building curves round. It was particularly challenging to attach the Barro baguettes to the curved support wall in these areas.”
Tassone and his team worked on the columns of the seven-meter-high bay with bars that were three meters away from the facade. “The greatest care was required here. The Barro baguettes are nonetheless easy to install, and so, thanks also to excellent support from the Argeton experts and our previous experience with the product, we were able to achieve the desired precision even in complicated areas,” reports Bruno Tassone.
Diversity and zest for life
Following the successful installation, the École Simone Veil now features a vibrant, colourful combination of natural terracotta and shiny glaze. The building thus offers schoolchildren a colourful place to learn and play, thanks to the high quality and outstanding durability of the product. A school where children can learn in safety and where their creativity is always stimulated. A successful example that shows how, time and again, our high-quality Argeton products inspire architects to come up with new ideas while at the same time granting them freedom of design.
