Centre de formation Grand Lognes

The Lognes site is a strategic facility of the Ministry of the Interior within the development framework of Greater Paris. It hosts a large number of trainees in professional training programs. The educational building design, originally built in 1982, is restructured and upgraded to enhance overall operational performance. A targeted landscape strategy enhances the heritage setting, while the training centre’s institutional identity is reinforced and reasserted within its urban context, consolidating its structuring role in the city.

The intervention integrates training functions and expands reception capacity, while reorganizing office spaces to enhance functional coherence and administrative autonomy. The campus architect defines a clear separation between training and administrative zones, articulated through distinct circulation flows within the educational building design, structured from the entrance and security control point via a covered circulation gallery.

Serving as the project’s “spine”, the blue gallery structures circulation across the training buildings and enhances functional legibility throughout the site. It guides users from the entrance through to the new 300-seat auditorium and the restaurant. The rigorous rhythm of its steel structure — echoing the existing framework — introduces a sense of institutional clarity and order. Wayfinding, waiting and registration sequences are designed by the higher education architect to reinforce the institutional image of the Ministry.

At the entrance of the educational building design, the gallery opens onto a new forecourt that reasserts the building’s relationship with the public realm. From this forecourt, the educational building design intentionally conceals the interior of the site. Only the entrance canopy and glimpses of vegetation are visible through regular façade openings, hinting at what lies beyond. The street-facing façade, executed in white architectural concrete, reaffirms the building’s institutional identity while expressing the ministerial character of the training centre. Accents of “security blue” articulate selected architectural and furniture elements, establishing a continuous colour-based wayfinding system throughout the site.