Description

Like the European School in Frankfurt, which was completed in 2015 and also designed by NKBAK, the newly founded comprehensive school was built on the south-western edge of the new Riedberg district of Frankfurt using a modular timber construction method. The new school is barely three kilometres away from the European School – which has won numerous awards – and has a somewhat simpler layout: a three-storey building with two offset rows of classrooms arranged north and south of a three metre wide corridor that extends the length of the building so that it is naturally lit at both ends and provides a view of the surroundings. As with the earlier school, the classrooms and administration rooms, toilets and stairwells consist of (a total of 90) prefabricated modules, made complete with walls, ceilings, windows, sanitaryware, radiators and electrical wiring in a factory of the Vorarlberg-based timber construction company Kaufmann Bausysteme and delivered to Frankfurt by lorry. The modules are three metres wide and seven metres long. The seven classrooms, each measuring nine metres, are made up of three modules: two edge elements, each with a longitudinal side wall made of cross laminated timber and a full-span beam made of beech, and a middle element with two beams and no cross-wall. The stairwells, toilets and administration rooms consist of just one, the latter of two modules. The duration from project commission (September 2015) to final handover (December 2016) was just over a year.

The most significant difference to its predecessor is the façade: while the wooden modules of the European School are covered with an aluminium skin, the façade of this school is clad with rough sawn horizontal boards of Douglas fir that will turn grey over time. The window sills are likewise a simple horizontal board. The façade cladding extends over part of each window and is perforated with a grid of holes in front of the opening casement that provides ventilation and acts as a sun screen as well as a barrier against falling out of the window (calculated by the structural engineer). A delicate canopy over the doors marks the entrance.

The interior contains well-proportioned, bright classrooms and access areas. The school’s largest room, the refectory, is seven modules wide. The classrooms are on the first and second floors, with the ground floor housing office areas and the refectory and multi-purpose hall. The only colour in the school is in the circulation areas, on the floors of the corridors and the walls of the staircases.

Originally published in Bauwelt 20.2017, pp. 24-31, abridged and edited for Building Types online, translated by Julian Reisenberger

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