The Institut Mine Telecom is being built on the Plateau de Saclay, in the Moulon district, and more precisely in the Polytechnique district, a few metres from the "Palaiseau" station of the future Line 18.

At the heart of a development where numerous research organisations, economic activities, housing and shops will coexist to form the living space of a research campus that will become one of the most important in the world.

The institute brings together the offices of researchers, research laboratories, teaching premises and the university restaurant, to accommodate Paritech University and Telecom Paris-Sud.

The building is designed around the idea that teaching and research are two interdependent disciplines. In order to encourage the crossing of flows between one and the other, to create a panel of diversified spaces to trigger the elusive serendipity between researchers and students, the morphology is designed according to a "rhizomic" scheme. The concept is materialised in a series of bridge buildings and landscaped terraces that organise easy interconnections between the different departments.

In the centre of the building, gardens and sheltered plazas are dedicated to the researchers' rest.

The facades, flexible in their design and appearance, are adorned on the outside by a vertical fibreglass sunshade that turns into a helix that pivots from the bottom up. A concept ideally adapted to the daily sunshine curve.

© Brunet-Saunier Architecture