What the new building of the Lyceum named after Alexandre Dumas will look like

A new building for the French Lyceum named after Alexandre Dumas will be constructed in the architectural style of modernism. A three-storey building with a total area of about two thousand square meters will appear in Krasnoselsky district. Its project design has been approved by the Committee for Architecture and Urban Planning of Moscow.

“The authors of the project decided to erect the lyceum building on legs – metal supports. The first to suggest raising buildings above the ground was an outstanding French architect Le Corbusier. He believed that in highly urbanized areas buildings on legs allow to expand pedestrian space. It was this concept that formed the basis for the project of the new building of the Alexandre Dumas Lyceum”, said the Chief Architect of Moscow Sergey Kuznetsov.

The building will have a regular rectangular shape, its facades will be finished using stone and glass. The entire first floor of the building will be occupied by a glass gallery. It will overlook a conveniently planned territory of the lyceum with a sports ground, bicycle parking place, benches, trees, bushes and flower beds. The major part of the building – the second and third floors – will be occupied by gyms designed for physical education lessons, as well as locker rooms and showers. The designer is SETEC ING, LLC.

Alexandre Dumas Lyceum has been working in Moscow since 2005. Its main building (7a Milyutinskiy lane) is located in the former French school built in the end of the 19th century. In 1997 the city granted a long-term lease on it to the French Embassy. The Lyceum is under the patronage of the French Embassy and the Agency for French Education Abroad. Now more than a thousand children between the ages of eight to seventeen are studying here. Teaching is provided in French.

Le Corbusier (real name – Charles-Edouard Jeanneret-Gris, 1887–1965) is a world-famous French architect of Swiss origin. He worked a lot both in France and abroad: in Argentina, Japan, Germany, Belgium, India and Switzerland. Some of his works are included in the UNESCO World Heritage List. These are Notre Dame du Haut – a chapel in Ronchamp, Villa Savoye in Poissy, and the Housing Unit project — a seventeen-storey residential housing Unité d’Habitation in Marseille. One the famous works by Le Corbusier in Moscow is the building of the Central Union of Consumer Societies in Myasnitskaya street (building 39, estate 1).

Working on the project, the author took into account the “five starting points of modern architecture”, which he discussed in 1920s. These are support posts, a flat roof, ribbon windows, open layouts, and clean facades. The Central Union building became the largest administrative and office building of its time. At present it is housing the Russian Federal State Statistics Service (Rosstat). In 2015 a monument to Le Corbusier was installed right in front of it.