In-fantia: Kindergarten

Maisons-Alfort, Ile de France

“Let us call In-fantia something which is not spoken” (Lyotard). The young child has a voice, but cannot yet articulate it. The voice of in-fantia is steered through crying, laughing, groaning, moaning, wailing, all clearly heard. So is conveyed a quintessential emotion that, over and above its inchoate nature, reaches nd touches us all.
In order to retrieve this feeling of in-fantia, the project for a Kindergarten at Maisons-Alfort aims at creating a substantial space exceeding the geometric strictures of the usual closed box.

Along the discontinuous rhythm of internal partitions, the outer walls are extended, coiled, interlaced and refolded, covering almost all the available plot. Avoiding the closed volumes of a banal building, partitions are deployed from the intimate interiors towards unexpected outer shapes, turning the whole area into a playground, a garden for the in-fantia.
Just as in Alice in Wonderland the Cat’s grin persists even after the Cat has vanished, the project hints at the pith of vanished contents, turned into pure spatial play.

Arnoldo Rivkin, Jamil Mehdaoui