Description

The challenge here was to create a compact building which nevertheless incorporated all the key elements of a traditional campus school minus the long corridors which traditionally cause significant problems in terms of pupil safety and security. The solution was to adopt a contemporary office plan form which organises classrooms around a large covered atrium. This zone, which unfolds over four storeys as a series of generous gallery/deck areas above the main ground floor area, provides break-out spaces relating directly to formal teaching rooms. The general layout provides all the formal teaching spaces required, however, by far the largest space is the social mixing area, i.e. the public square utilising the atrium’s entire volume and containing public facilities like the school’s restaurant, the library and the auditorium.

The plan then comprises a square block of teaching accommodation approximately 7 metres deep which wraps around the circular central zone. All the teaching spaces flow off this high and almost monumental circulation zone which features a glazed kidney shaped library slung above a grand access stair. Like most of the teaching spaces within this dramatic environment, it is almost completely glazed, again giving the idea of the ubiquitous early 21st century open-plan office building. However, because of its sloping sides and strange organic shape, it is the room which receives the most immediate attention, and inevitably attracts student learners like flies to a honey pot.

The entrance is orientated towards the main road, to the northeast, and cuts one corner of the square main block diagonally. This diagonal glazed wall also has a wedge shaped assembly hall to the left of the entrance. Its raked stalls, accessible from the ground floor rising up to the second floor projection room, provide seating for over 130 students. Compositionally it is, like the library, another space expressed as an object, with its heavy solid form crashing through the glazed external screen slightly at odds with the formality of the rest of the building. Inside, it stares blankly back at the library across the urban square.

The position of the school in relation to the terrain, which slopes down from east to west, is incorporated into the building’s sectional form. The descending hill is used inside the building, forming an amphitheatre visible beneath the library on the eastern corner of the square. The great roof slopes down complementing the natural topography. The sports facilities are placed in a separate building. Main external façades are clad in heat-treated timber paneling, giving the building a warm brown colour, which balances the colder more engineered glazing system, a palette of cold and warm, soft and hard. The planning concept incorporates a natural way of dividing the building into distinct zones of public, semi-public and enclosed private groups ranging in size from 35 to one on one. Communal teaching areas which service each zone of classrooms are connected to the main square by three sets of stairs. Study areas are close at hand, in various bays and smaller teaching zones which relate to classroom areas. The distinctive hierarchy enables a subtle understanding of territories. As a result the layout is all very legible yet somehow anti-institutional.

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Originally published in: Mark Dudek, Schools and Kindergartens: A Design Manual, Birkhäuser, 2015.