Montessori College Oost

Mark Dudek

Description

The architects believe that teenage children prefer to hang out together rather than with adults. However, there is little dedicated space for teenagers to do this in the modern city, so they have developed the school as a place not just for formal learning but also one with lots of areas beyond the classroom, zones which are ideal for chance encounters. The architecture of the building also has a peculiarly ‘cool’ style, which feels unusual, a sort of refined street architecture, yet internalised and made secure for students to enjoy and for staff to keep a discreet eye on the diverse range of students attending Montessori College Oost. Diversity is one of the key aspects of the brief which the designers had to address. Oriented towards the needs of the refugee population in this area of Amsterdam, this is a school with a critical role to play in supporting vulnerable children and helping their families to integrate into the community. Students of more than 56 different nationalities attend. Most speak little or no Dutch. For that reason alone, the architects believed that the environment needed to play a vital role in reassuring students, primarily through a sort of architectural legibility within the space-making, it being complex yet understandable and therefore not disorientating.

This is a building students can decipher, like a second language. So drawing on the metaphor of the classical city space, all the areas beyond the enclosed classrooms were conceived of as an urban plaza, open to all students within the community, who are free to explore between lessons, at lunchtime and at the end of the day, just as they might explore the city itself. The main teaching accommodation is formed as a dual aspect block six storeys high in places and almost 100 metres in length. There is also a vertical gallery carved out between the two classroom blocks, with intermediate half floors on either side of the void. The conceptual sketch illustrates how students benefit from views across the void, with opposite floors at intermediate levels to each other. This also facilitates stepped connections between the two sides, encouraging a constant physical dialogue which evokes a sense of spatial complexity, again a characteristic of the city.

The connections across the void are bridged over in lots of places. This bridging accommodation is formed into stepped galleries where students can sit. It is a building which trusts the students with its openness. The desire to avoid compartments with fire doors everywhere has a cost, however; the central void cannot be used as a primary fire escape. Instead the designers have provided external galleries, which connect to outside fire escape stairs at three points. On the ground floor, the plan appears to bisect, forming an additional splayed wing, which runs parallel to the adjacent railway line. This wing contains the main vocational teaching areas, large workshop spaces for the development of trade skills such as car mechanics, plumbing and joinery. The preeminent position of these areas and the generous well-equipped workshop spaces balance the importance of vocational training with that of the more academic subjects, which take place in the conventional, closed classroom areas. Between the two wings is the assembly hall, a space for a multitude of different activities.