Description

One approach to integrating schools and communities is to co-locate open access community facilities with the school itself. In the small Swedish town of Kungälv near Göteborg a new lower and middle school have been designed to form part of a larger community hub called Mimers Hus which is openly accessible throughout the day. The intention is that instead of being an institutional establishment the school is combined with community and cultural facilities that can be used by the public, but also by the staff and students. The elegant but simple building is made up of three connecting blocks; lower school, middle school and public facilities. The latter block forms the main public entrance to the building and includes a library, auditorium, restaurant and café that are used by both the local community and the school.

The Sustaining Small Expanding Towns (SusSET) project, an EU initiative, has praised Mimers Hus as an example of how small towns in particular can provide community facilities: ‘The daily activities in Mimers Hus attract a lot of people. Small children come to have their first dancing or music lessons. Senior citizens come to be introduced to the mysteries of the internet. People of all ages come to listen to a concert or to go the theatre. They take part in a workshop or use the numerous public computers. They read the newspaper or they find the book they didn’t know they were looking for. Or they just meet over a cup of coffee.’

But what makes this project so successful? From the building plan the majority of the school accommodation seems to be quite separated from the public facilities. But perhaps that is the key; from the main entrance this building does not look or feel like a school, in fact it looks more like an art gallery. The building sits right onto the pavement, which widens out around the front of the building into a public plaza with a tall landmark sculpture. In most cases it would be impossible to arrive at the front doors of a school without passing through imposing railings and when you get there you would enter into a small lobby, where you would be interrogated about your purpose before being allowed to penetrate any further into the building. Here however, the highly glazed façades allow passers-by to look inside the impressive triple height library space; a space which visitors can freely enter.

But then is this not just a public building stuck onto the front of a school? Whilst a large part of the school facilities are accommodated in two connecting blocks behind the main public block, interaction between the students and other visitors occurs throughout the day. For example the chefs in the basement restaurant are pupils studying catering, the art gallery displays work of professional artists as well as school goers and the library and theatre provide resources for the school. Circulation spaces double as study areas and informal meeting places for both students and the local community. The open design of this part of the building including open staircases and galleried walkways means that passive observation makes it feel like a safe place to be; a technique now being employed in many school buildings to avoid problems of bullying in corridors and dark corners. Interestingly, the SusSET project suggests that by designing facilities such as Mimers Hus with young people in mind, they become more user-friendly for all. This certainly seems to be the case here.

 

Source: ‘Sustaining Small Expanding Towns’ project (SusSET), an EU-funded programme, deals with sustainable small town development strategies. Cf. in particular ‘Kungälv – Combined School and Library’. http://www.pagodagraphics.com/susset/csf_dis_more.html

 

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Originally published in: Prue Chiles (ed.), Leo Care, Howard Evans, Anna Holder, Claire Kemp, Building Schools: Key Issues for Contemporary Design, Birkhäuser, 2015.