When the municipality of Enghien-les-Bains, an affluent town in the Val d'Oise region, decided to build an extension to Les Cygnes nursery school in the form of a new leisure centre, an important question arose: what would the environmental impact of this project be on local biodiversity?
The nursery school is located in an area inhabited by 73 species of birds, including 39 native species, and the new building is surrounded by several hundred-year-old trees. The main risk was that birds would collide with the large windows, misled by their reflection of the sky and neighbouring trees.
Following research by DPLG architect Olivier Bratigny and ecologist Aurélien Huguet, the municipality opted for Pilkington AviSafe™, innovative glass designed to protect birds.
This product has a robust coating on its outer surface that interrupts the light reflection from glass surfaces, a phenomenon responsible for many fatal collisions involving birds. Thanks to this coating, accentuated by UV rays, birds, which see in the ultraviolet spectrum, perceive a shiny obstacle rather than reflections of trees on the glass.
The human eye sees vertical stripes that are more or less pronounced depending on the lighting conditions and the angle of observation. Compared to other solutions commonly used to make glass surfaces visible to birds, such as screen printing, laminated glass with patterned interlayers or film bonded to the glass, the Pilkington AviSafe™ coating is durable and has a very limited impact on the light transmission of the glazing. This allows maximum natural light into the building.
Nesting boxes have been installed under the roof and around the perimeter of the building to provide shelter for birds in the city centre, while protecting them from the risk of colliding with adjacent glass structures thanks to the Pilkington AviSafe Optilam™ Therm S3 glass.
The thermal and acoustic comfort of the occupants has also been considered, as Pilkington AviSafe™ is laminated with Pilkington Optitherm™ S3 low-emissivity glass to retain heat inside the building and is assembled into insulating glazing with acoustic laminated glass.
From February 2025, this pioneering establishment in France, which is leading the way in terms of sustainable development, will welcome the children of the municipality, initially as a nursery before eventually becoming a leisure centre.
Photography: © K. Khalfi