The new school architecture facing the climate

As a masterful close to the 15th International Wood Construction Forum, Workshop B10 on new school approaches, available for free consultation on the Forum’s YouTube channel, is confronted with heatwaves.

SAM Architecture delivers, in the Groues district of Nanterre, a school group which illustrates an evolution of frontal pedagogy. Penhuel is going in the same direction and its Tremblay-en-France school wins the Equerre d’Argent in November 2025. Innovative pedagogy is at the heart of the project of the international school group of Troyes (LA Architecture, Raphaël Gabrion). Epicuria is delivering a school in Nantes among the trees and Tracks is renovating in Colombes by creating enlarged classrooms with their equivalent on a terrace. After a workshop on serial school renovation in February 2025, the FBC15 “school” workshop at the Grand Palais, last February, extremely well attended by school aaps as every year, kept its promises as the final highlight of the 15th Forum conferences. At the end of this troubled school year, the nugget is made freely available on the Forum channel at a time when school architecture is facing criticism for not having anticipated heatwaves.

The Yvonne-Kerzrého school group is disruptive from every point of view. Upstairs, a courtyard which can also be used as a classroom outside. © International Wood Construction Forum

Adapt and die

The year 2025 was marked by the debate onadaptation to climate change. We would therefore have to resolve to face temperatures of +4°C on average by the end of the century, the it referring to the newborns of the year who will then blow out their 75th candle, fresh and ready to have lived through a hilarious century. The issues were poorly posed because there will be no human adaptation to +4°C on average, too bad for the newborn. On the other hand, it is undoubtedly necessary to think about give back occultations to schools which will allow the latter not to be too stunned by the heat in spring and autumn, during his schooling, when we will still be talking about the Paris Agreement and carbon neutrality.

Raphaël Gabrion, designer with LA Architecture of the new international school in Troyes, is delivering the second phase at the end of July, for an operation that will hit the headlines at the start of the school year. © International Wood Construction Forum

Educate humans

The year 2025 was also marked by AI, which we know will dramatically accelerate global warming and deprive children of the prospect of one day having a job. Unless, as Boris Schneider of SAM Architecture explains at the opening of Atelier B10, we develop at school the human assets of creativity, spontaneity, communion… And for that, the good old frontal and rigid classrooms are no longer enough. We need increased common spaces with sorts of alcoves, scenic spaces, classes paired with outdoor spaces, biomass, etc.

The Claire Brétécher school in Nantes, built in the trees. © International Wood Construction Forum

THE warming means that the probability of classes outside increasesthat the bioclimatic protection of trees is welcome. But what happens when the country is hit by a cumulative two weeks of heatwaves in the space of less than two months, in the middle of the school season? That everyone only has the word air conditioning on their lips and that educational ambitions will be dampened in the next programs by a political injunction of compress schools into refrigerators ?

The solutions exist and do not necessarily start with c

Milena Karanesheva from Karawitz, AMO for Val de Marne as part of a passive school project, previously president of the ICEB and specialist in passive construction, comments: “in all cases, the treatment of the envelope is essential. Beyond passive rules, projects today require dynamic thermal simulation to ensure their good behavior in summer comfort which becomes spring and autumn comfort in certain cases. Technical solutions exist as an alternative to air conditioning which, however, covers almost the entire school cooling market active today.“. Except that when it heats up for too long, nothing resists. Air-conditioned Parisian media libraries had to close at the peak of the heatwaves. The question that arises is quite simply: close schools in this case which will still remain a little extreme for the duration of the schooling of the newborn in 2026.

Renovate by increasing classroom areas to 80 m² + their external twin. © International Wood Construction Forum

Climate Change Architects

The subject of the Workshop was not the new heatwave pedagogies and we can trust the speakers not to abandon questions of summer comfort in favor of creative pedagogy. Tracks receives two laudatory articles in the major press for its new schools in Merville and the island of NantesL’Nantes school Josephine Baker has also just won a regional prize for wooden construction. SAM delivered to Nanterre what was undoubtedly one of the very first E4C2 school designs, i.e. the maximum possible energy and carbon savings, and its detached balconies forming a cap, in concrete supported by an internal wooden structure, constitute a great reference from SAM and Bollinger + Grohmann. LA Architecture, Raphaël Gabrion, Le Penhuel do not appear by chance in a work in preparation on the “architects of climate change”. They integrated the question on all levels. Except that the worsening situation surprises them as it surprises everyone.

For Warren Lepolard of Le Penhuel & Associés Architectes, the new pedagogy also involves architecture that shows how it is done, and this does not fit well with the enclosures required by the decree of February 19. © International Wood Construction Forum

/ Jonas Tophoven / © Forum International Bois Construction