Vatel campus is the most urban part of the whole project Brossette Block. The 400 students of the school, the 50-room hotel, the restaurant and café, consists of a polarity exerted not only on the Brossette site, but also in the entire city of Nantes. This intention has led us to amplify the collective nature of this element: the square thus becomes a place, and this place becomes the link between the Brosette parcel and the neighboring parcels of Brosette and Quai de la Loire. This place opens beyond the area offering views to the other side of the river, the city and its emergence. Inversely, from these points of view, we perceive the scale of the territory.

How then to symbolize through architecture the values of Vatel? We tried to restore the art of receiving to the French, which for us signifies a state of mind more than a code, using the given notions, discovering, taking care of details, as many axioms on which to base our choices.

The multiplicity of paths, views, depth of field, framing, exacerbated by a play on elevation, participates in the creation of an unexpected sensory event that accompanies de-ambulation or access to rooms. The materiality of the project also transcribes the notion of discovery. By its mineral character, the building expresses its monumentality and its preciousness, and with the effect of transparency and light, its conviviality.

The bias to have a compact design led us to the emergence of an intangible object, changing, an architecture made of lightness, of glass and finely screened stone. Architecture in which the game is to blur the tangible boundaries of the building, rendering it as a reading of a solid volume in a poetic vagueness and evanescence.

During the day alabaster protects from direct sunlight, while at night it reverses and artificial light is emitted. Everything becomes magical.