Description

The church client for this comprehensive community integrated school chose their architect carefully. Considering Plus+ Bauplanung Peter Hübner’s reputation as designer of a distinctive organic form of architecture which incorporates community participation throughout the process, even utilising parents to ‘build it themselves’ when budgets run low, their choice was not without risk. Although self-build approaches were not required here, the radical concept, which supports this design, has created something which hardly resembles a school in the conventional way we might understand it. No slick corporate architectural statements here or high security CCTV cameras and metal fences to keep people away. Instead we have what appears to be a series of linked pavilions, mainly two storeys in height, clad in timber and surrounded by well-manicured gardens. Walking around the disparate fragmented classrooms and departmental areas, this resembles a very well-conceived suburban housing quarter, with neat courtyard gardens, streets and squares which are knit seamlessly into the surrounding residential quarters. Stylistically it sets out to be deliberately anti-institutional, a school which does not try to be intimidating, rather it is friendly and accessible, a sort of ‘home from home.’

The school is one part of an extensive residential quarter planned by the town of Gelsenkirchen-Bismarck. Through its green areas and low-scale forms the school is fully integrated into the new urban residential environment and forms part of the social heart of the town itself. An approach called ‘Familien-, Erziehungs-, Lebens- und Stadtteilschule’ (literally translated as ‘school for the family, education, life and the neighbourhood’) informs the concept; education is matched closely to the real experiences of the children within that community. The school is the community, and in some ways the community is the school. Education is not seen as something which stops and starts when students pass over the school’s threshold, rather education happens everywhere, conceived as a process which is inextricably woven into the fabric of the community; there is a particular emphasis on nature and awareness of the individual’s place within a fragile world. The architecture, whilst elegant and modern, reflects this world view. It is an architecture which is in harmony with the educational philosophy.

From its inception, the architects recognised the importance of involving future users in the planning. They engaged teachers, parents and above all pupils in the design process using a number of participatory techniques, but in particular presenting ideas and concepts in the form of 1:10 scale models over a two-month consultation period. The relatively long planning period and the readily understood and humane architectural language adopted from the outset allowed community participants to concentrate on organisation, size and detail. As individuals, they could imagine where they might sit in their schoolroom, the view they would get from the window, or the special garden seat they might use to meet with a teacher to discuss their assignment. Current school performance (after the main buildings have been in operation since September 2004) suggests that this approach has resulted in significant improvements; involving the school’s immediate neighbours has developed a sense of community ownership, which can be evidenced by the lack of graffiti and vandalism.

In order to integrate academic, practical and social learning more effectively, the architects developed the scheme as a series of low scale buildings organised along streets, with linked classroom pavilions ranged along secondary avenues off the main street, like branches off the trunk of a tree; the main street terminates at one end with a mini town square surrounded by the school offices (like the town hall), the school hall (like the theatre) and the library. Thus the experience of passing from one subject area to another is essentially social, conducted along pleasant traffic free streets, rather than along enclosed corridors. This reflects the school’s conceptual model as that of a miniature self-managed town. What makes this such an engaging metaphor is that the streets are actually like streets you might find in any interesting historical townscape, with architectural variety and no little drama in the way the various elements come together. It is an extremely attractive alternative to most conventional school buildings.

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