The painful move of the AgroParisTech school to Saclay

From the terrace of their new school, Théo Joly and Mathilde Malagié observe, a little disconcerted, the site on which they will spend their next two years. Heaps of earth, diggers, concrete frames, site barriers… Both have just completed a master’s degree from AgroParisTech, the most prestigious of the major French agronomy schools, which is moving, for the start of the 2022 academic year, to 66,000 square meters on the Saclay plateau.

For five years, moves and constructions have accelerated on these former agricultural lands of Essonne destined to become the largest scientific hub in France, “visible from Shanghai”, according to the established formula, to refer to the classification of the same name. Grandes écoles, research laboratories, business research and development (R&D) centers, university buildings, the Saclay plateau condenses nearly 20% of French research, a “French Silicon Valley”.

Among the latest arrivals is the Télécom Paris engineering school, which left the Parisian district of Butte-aux-Cailles at the end of 2019 to move into an ocher building-liner, winner of a Pritzker Prize. Or the Ecole Normale Supérieure Paris-Saclay (ex-Cachan), comfortable for two years in vast premises signed Renzo Piano. They joined other engineering schools, such as the National School of Advanced Techniques, the National School of Statistics and Economic Administration or CentraleSupélec, who arrived during the 2010 decade.

For the start of the new school year, in addition to the 3,500 students and staff of AgroParisTech, the Faculty of Pharmacy of the University of Paris-Saclay (3,200 students) is moving into a gigantic new building. And it’s not over: Servier is building a large campus, Danone’s R&D is going to move into a new site there… Enough to give a little more life to this complex which remains, to this day, far from attractive.

minitown of brains

If, to the west, the part of Moulon has recently begun to look like a district, the central zone (“the Polytechnique district”), where AgroParisTech is located, remains a cold and monotonous whole, surrounded by works, little vegetated. The entire plateau remains marked by its “monoactivity” – a site focused almost exclusively on science and research.

A mini-city of brains, which empties after dark. Restaurants, shops or cafes are rare, cultural places non-existent. “Saclay is an anachronistic project”, tackles Emmanuel Ferrand, polytechnician, researcher, who has been visiting the site for thirty years. Above all, the plateau suffers badly from its lack of accessibility. The center of Paris is an hour and a half away by bus and RER – line 18 of the metro, of which we can see the viaduct under construction, will not arrive on the site before 2026 and will be completed in 2030.

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