A new sustainable campus focused on innovation has opened its doors in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France, marking a significant addition to the region's educational landscape. The iXcampus Design School, designed by SAME architectes and completed in 2025, represents a thoughtful integration of modern educational architecture with the area's rich natural and architectural heritage.
Situated at the edge of the state-owned forest of Saint-Germain-en-Laye and near the town center, the 2,400-square-meter facility engages in a meaningful dialogue with its suburban surroundings, luxuriant vegetation, and remarkable landscape heritage. The design team, led by SAME architectes, worked in collaboration with landscape architect Djao Rakitine and engineering consultants AIA ingénierie, AIA environnement, and ART acoustique to create a comprehensive educational environment.
The architectural approach emphasizes sustainability and adaptability, with the new buildings forming part of an overall vision that respects the identity of the existing park setting. The design creates an architectural dialogue where harmony emerges from the interactions between volumes and shared design DNA, ensuring the architecture's flexibility, adaptability, and long-term sustainability. The integration among existing buildings demonstrates a careful balance between innovation and contextual sensitivity.
Positioned at the far eastern side of the campus, the design school benefits from significant visibility in the urban space through the layout of a generous public forecourt. This forecourt serves as both a signal for the main entrance and ensures a smooth transition between the campus and the street, creating an inviting gateway for students and visitors alike.
The building's form follows the natural morphology of the site, featuring a splayed parallelepiped with a roof shaped as a concave curve. These clean, taut lines act as visual connectors linking the town, the park, and other university entities within the broader campus context. The façade incorporates massive stone sourced from local quarries, deliberately echoing the materiality of local monuments and enhancing the building's connection to its territorial context.
Architecturally, all façades receive equal attention and elegance, presenting a regular checkerboard-like rhythm that alternates stone and wood-framed window recesses. This logic of modularity and stacked stone construction results in simple, effective, and compact architecture. The material simplicity of the façades relies on a regular grid system, with variations in depth and alternating transparency and opacity that enliven the elevations and create visual interest throughout the day.
The interior design prioritizes flexibility through a post-and-beam structural system with lightweight and easily transformable partitioning walls. This approach ensures the building's adaptability and reversibility, enabling easier integration of evolving educational requirements and organizational changes. The ground floor, directly connected to both public space and the outdoor landscape, houses the school lobby and serves as the primary interface between the institution and the community.
A distinctive feature of the interior is the two-level hall that extends under a vast, open space, complete with an inviting spiral staircase that signals the way to classrooms on the upper floors. Administrative offices are strategically located in the narrowest part of the building, utilizing a depth well-adapted to this type of functional use. The basement level houses a lecture hall and computer rooms, which benefit from natural light through luxuriantly planted basement window wells, demonstrating the architects' commitment to bringing natural elements throughout the building.
The project represents a significant contribution to sustainable campus design, showcasing how contemporary educational architecture can successfully integrate environmental consciousness with functional excellence. The iXcampus Design School stands as a model for future educational facilities, demonstrating that innovative design can respect historical context while meeting the evolving needs of modern education.
