To Work with Certainty
The Colour Chart by Claudia Valsells
Lydex – an abbreviation of Lycée d’Excellence – occupies roughly a quarter of the masterplan for Université Mohammed VI Polytechnique’s Rabat campus. The complex comprises an academic block, an administrative hub, a cultural centre housing a library and a 300-seat auditorium, accommodation for 1500 students, a health centre, a large dining hall, and an ambitious suite of sports facilities, including a multi-sport pavilion, an Olympic-size swimming pool, and a centre dedicated to combat sports.
The importance of sports in the lives of the high-school students is reflected in the layout of Lydex. At its centre is an athletics track – like a Greek agora or amphitheatre – that organises Lydex into two distinct areas: an academic area, itself arranged around an interior courtyard, and a residential area. Each building within the complex stands on its own platform, such that the landscape steps up and down between “urban terraces”, each programmed with a different sport or activity.
Despite this range in programme, the buildings share a consistent spatial logic: each is organised around a central space that defines its function, whether it be an open dining hall, a combat arena, or a swimming pool. These interior spaces all use colour to reinforce their identities, with bold, monochromatic treatments that contrast with the light, neutral palette of the exteriors (a gesture found in other projects by the Taller, such as Walden 7). While the architecture of Lydex continues the geometric language of the campus as a whole, it is distilled here into simpler, more essential forms to suit the younger cohort of students.
IMAGES BY
GREGORI CIVERA
IMAGES BY
GREGORI CIVERA