Ecole Primaire Supérieure, devenue le Collège Classique, Moderne et Technique et actuel Lycée Rollinat
MonumentHidden Treasure
Ecole Primaire Supérieure, devenue le Collège Classique, Moderne et Technique et actuel Lycée Rollinat, located in Argenton-sur-Creuse (Indre), is a modern edifice built in the 19th-20th centuries. The monument is currently closed to visitors.
Key facts
- Type
- autre
- Period
- Modern (19th-20th century)
- Location
- Argenton-sur-Creuse, Indre, Centre-Val de Loire
- Visit
- Closed to visitors
- GPS
- 46.5890, 1.5119
- Mérimée Reference
- PA36000022
An Art Deco masterpiece from the inter-war period, the Lycée Rollinat enchants visitors with its facades adorned with sgraffito and mosaics, a rare example of ambitious school architecture in the heart of the Indre region.
© Wikimedia Commons
History
Standing in the town of Argenton-sur-Creuse, what was once a École Primaire Supérieure is one of the most accomplished examples of Art Deco civil architecture in the Centre region. Far from the large metropolises that monopolise the attention of twentieth-century architecture enthusiasts, this school building reveals a remarkable aesthetic and programmatic ambition for a town of modest size, testifying to the determination of a Republic in the throes of reconstruction to give public education its letters of nobility. The first thing that strikes you is the façade overlooking the city. The architects Gaud and Grelier orchestrated a subtle dialogue between brick and ashlar, materials rooted in the local building tradition, and a resolutely modern decorative vocabulary. The linear frames, geometric shapes and, above all, the magnificent sgraffito decorations give the building a strong personality, halfway between the functional sobriety of the Republican school and the ornamental exuberance of the decorative arts of the Roaring Twenties. Sgraffito - an ancient technique that came back into fashion at the turn of the 20th century - involves scratching coloured plaster to reveal the underlying layers, thus creating motifs in relief or relief. Its presence here, combined with the use of mosaics, signals a total artistic ambition, that of a building where architecture and applied arts merge into a unified work, in line with the Art Deco ideal. Although the site is still in use as a secondary school, visitors are invited to linger over the composition of the main façade: the large central body that dominates, the corner pavilions that punctuate the perspective, the play of light and shadow created by the projections and ornaments. The surrounding area of Argenton-sur-Creuse, a town with many galleries painted on the Creuse River, is a pleasant extension of the visit. Listed as a historic monument since 2008, the Lycée Rollinat embodies a little-known but essential page in French architectural history: that of a provincial modernity that was both inventive and deeply rooted, combining educational progress and formal beauty in the decades following the Great War.
Architecture
The Lycée Rollinat is built around a perfectly symmetrical U-shaped plan, a classic composition in French institutional architecture that organises spaces around a protected inner courtyard. The main longitudinal body, three storeys high above a semi-buried level, forms the hub of the complex, linked by two perpendicular wings that end in pavilions on the street side. This imposing elevation gives the building a strong urban presence, both monumental and well-proportioned. The materials chosen are both faithful to regional building traditions, with the use of brick and ashlar in local stone, and to modernity, with sharply profiled frames and geometric ornamentation typical of Art Deco. The façade overlooking the town is the showpiece of the complex: here the architects developed an ambitious decorative programme using the sgraffito technique - decorations obtained by scraping superimposed polychrome plaster - and incorporating mosaic panels with stylised motifs. These ornamental elements, treated with a geometric sobriety characteristic of the 1920s, perfectly illustrate the ideal of synthesis between architecture and the decorative arts that inspired the designers of the time. The gable roofs, added during the 1924-1931 extension to replace the original terraces, mark a shift towards more traditional roofing. The workshop wing added in 1951-1952 by Pierre Bourguin introduced the shed roof structure - an industrial solution offering generous, uniform natural lighting, in stark contrast to the Art Deco formal language of the original buildings.
Related Figures
Gaud — architecte co-concepteur de l'école (1921-1931)Grelier — architecte co-concepteur de l'école (1921-1931)Pierre Bourguin — architecte des transformations du gymnase en ateliers (1951-1952)Maurice Rollinat (1846-1903) — poète et compositeur argentonnais, parrain éponyme du lycée
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Frequently Asked Questions
Where is Ecole Primaire Supérieure, devenue le Collège Classique, Moderne et Technique et actuel Lycée Rollinat located?
Ecole Primaire Supérieure, devenue le Collège Classique, Moderne et Technique et actuel Lycée Rollinat is located in Argenton-sur-Creuse, Indre department, Centre-Val de Loire region, France.
When was Ecole Primaire Supérieure, devenue le Collège Classique, Moderne et Technique et actuel Lycée Rollinat built?
Ecole Primaire Supérieure, devenue le Collège Classique, Moderne et Technique et actuel Lycée Rollinat dates back to a period built in the modern era (19th-20th century).
Is Ecole Primaire Supérieure, devenue le Collège Classique, Moderne et Technique et actuel Lycée Rollinat open to visitors?
Ecole Primaire Supérieure, devenue le Collège Classique, Moderne et Technique et actuel Lycée Rollinat is currently closed to visitors.