Maison de la Paix | IPAS - architectes

Architectural concept :
The world is increasingly shrinking; day by day, it becomes more accessible to our point of view. The great number of towns have taken that into consideration and thus they used architecture as a visible vector to indicate their attractions to the world.
Graz, Bilbao and Sydney have taken advantage of the benefit that architecture gives to a city. Besides, in the past, it wasn’t that relation, that made the largest civilisations popular.
Even if there was a technical development, the poetic requirements stay eternal. The Cities are excitingly looking after that architectural magic, after the sculptural aspects, after paradisiacal open spaces, after the flavour of life.
Thoughts are coming and going but the scene persists and with it the human being. Therefore it is essential to take care of our place and sometimes to get rid of, or to regenerate, the banal world. This conformism destroys every emotion to not to disrupt anyone.
To reach this inaccessibility, we need to accept our elk which knows more than our minds, speaks more truth than the law, to struggle against the barriers, the limits of our fears.
This is why we liberated our project from every urban approach; we preferred to communicate with the park in front of it, to continue its vegetal space and its walks up to the esplanades of the Maison de la Paix, draw a building in a park, rather than create a replacement of a city or anything else. A poetic gesture like a punch against the suffocation of our daily urban routine.
Peace is a fragile state equal to the balance of a funambulist. When a human being achieves, he’s approaching to its felicity. Therefore, this project develops a natural aesthetic, as the elk does to peace: roundings, where the intensity of the light diffuses and mitigates, curvatures, where the eyes slide over into the park, sharp angles, which suddenly topple over into the reflection of the landscape, an interlacing of the volumes which touch each other, taking each other by the hand like a sign of fraternity, which cohabit between them like the trees do to their homologues by caressing their leafage. Large shady coverts, a play of transparencies, which give different faces to the building. Right down the line a variety of sequences which vary according to the situation and the spacial constellation required by the program. Like in the appearance of their motion or in the immobility of their working activities, the occupiers are in touch with this universe in permanence …

Project, functionality and ecology:
La Maison de la Paix was built for the client IHEID and shelters the international university and centres of the confederations DCAF,GCSP, GICHD and some partner institutes. An administration with about 1800 working places can be assigned. A restaurant with kitchen and cafeteria form part of the building as well as a knowledge centre with library, aula, class rooms, conference rooms, parking and archives.
It was built by Green-Design to meet criteria of long lasting development. The urbanism consists of the proximity to the public transport (railway station, tram, and bus), the implantation of this giant university and research complex on a cramped parcel and the integration of the building into the park Eugène-Rigot.
The functionality contains the ultra-flexibility of the spaces and offers the occupiers great convenience comprising the natural light and the working atmosphere.
To approach the ecology of the building, the whole building can be labelled as Minergie. The principal materials correspond to the criteria of Minergie Eco. The primary, secondary and tertiary structure are simple and economically chosen. The costs to maintain the project are small. In connection with the GLN (Genève Lac Nation) solar and thermic panels have been used to treat the cooling and heating, as well as the recovery of rainwater.

photo credit: Gérald Sciboz