The «CIFOM» technical college

Le Locle, Switzerland

Photo © Jean-Michel Landecy

Schools

Architects: meier + associés architectes

Location: Rue Klaus, Le Locle, Switzerland
Year: 2004
Client: Ville du Locle, Etat de Neuchatel, Confédération

This project, to create a technical college in the western part of the town, is part of the urban framework of the Junod plan, an orthogonal grid of streets and avenues laid out in a narrow natural valley. The fact that the old Technicum from the 1950s has been retained, anchors the new structure even more firmly within the town.

The need to incorporate a scheme catering for vehicles into this fairly tight urban grid has resulted in a multi-storey “vertical garage”. To serve the specific needs of this scheme, the section introduces double alternating levels. The result is a kind of staged presentation of car repair apprenticeship, where the vehicles are lifted on hoists and where people can see, and be seen, by each other. The mechanical aspect – the car lift – is at the heart of the traffic within the college.

The façade of the new section is modulated by the use of glass and aluminium panels, whose composition varies with the orientation. To the south, it is very open, to favour the daylight and the landscape views, and to the north it is more closed, while still expressing the activity within. The very slender proportions of the modules evoke the watchmaking workshops of the past, which even then favoured natural light and metrics by using construction methods that were very advanced in terms of modularity and prefabrication.