The project’s location — set on the vast glacial plain crossed by the Arve River and framed by the Aravis mountain range and the Giffre massif — immediately anchors it within a powerful landscape that has shaped the layout and development of Sallanches.
Designed as a pedagogical tool for learning, practice, and artistic dissemination, the school is arranged entirely on one level to encourage fluid circulation between programmatic entities and foster encounters that stimulate creative synergy.
The various functional units are organized in a ring around a central patio. From the circulation areas, views extend across the courtyard, making the different parts of the school visually and spatially connected. This patio — both luminous and spacious — enhances internal movement and offers an additional outdoor space, sheltered within the school’s perimeter, usable during the day or for public performances.
Here, the immediate context recedes, leaving only the silhouette of the surrounding mountain ridges cutting into the sky. The project recenters and condenses its program within, while opening outward toward the spectacle of the alpine landscape.
Both introverted and extroverted, the floor plan establishes a hierarchy of relationships with the landscape: the primary spaces — auditorium, orchestra hall, and central patio — occupy the heart of the building and open toward the peaks, while the peripheral ring — practice rooms, lobby, technical spaces — connects daily uses to the immediate environment. Inside and out, perspectives intersect, and the different practices are revealed.
The building asserts a singular identity within its site. Rather than blending with the surrounding built environment, it seeks to resonate with the natural backdrop. Its architecture rests on a horizontal wooden base, stained with a green saturator to root it in the surrounding vegetation.
Above this base, the roof unfolds like a broad sheet of zinc, folding and unfolding in response to the spatial needs below. This expressive roof — through its patterns, form, and materiality — creates a silhouette where angles, light, and geometry echo the surrounding mountain ridgelines.
Through its tones and forms, the building establishes a subtle dialogue with the landscape. At the same time, it affirms its public status within the city through its generous entrance porch, which symbolically draws the public realm under its roof — embodying the spirit of openness and welcome that the institution aims to offer its community.
With the exception of a few structural concrete walls and foundational elements, the entire building is constructed in timber — a locally sourced material selected under the shared commitment of both the project team and the client to use Bois des Alpes certified wood, ensuring regional origin and quality of supply.
The project also embraces sustainable energy strategies by integrating a geothermal heat pump system, using six deep boreholes to meet the building’s energy needs — ensuring both environmental responsibility and high performance.
From the competition phase onward, the decision to use a zinc shingle roof was made to lend the surfaces a unique texture and vibrancy. Here, zinc is reinterpreted not as a continuous skin, but as a pattern — a compositional element at a human and legible scale.
Initially expressed in the form of diamonds — or double triangles — this motif becomes a unifying thread throughout the project. It is employed not only for its formal and narrative qualities, but also to address technical challenges.
The plywood coffers in the auditorium and the geometries of the practice room ceilings reinterpret this figure to meet acoustic requirements. Externally, the roof’s standing seam zinc eaves are shaped into scalloped edges, aligned with the rhythm of the zinc shingles, casting a vibrant play of shadow on the façades.
The stratified wooden cladding, organizing the arrangement of openings, features a crenellated rhythm reminiscent of the ornamental profiles of traditional Savoyard palines.
Even the triangular brackets supporting the ballet barres — multiplied by the reflections in the mirrors — bring back the diamond shape, now a recurring, almost ritual motif.
Far from being a mere ornament, this figure becomes a pretext for careful attention to every detail — a language that connects, narrates, and structures the entire project.
