Description

In 2018 the Basel-based Christoph Merian Verlag published “Neue Schulräume – Architektur für zeitgemäßes Lernen” (New School Environments – Architecture for Contemporary Learning) which presents some fifty projects for the “School of Tomorrow”. As in other countries, Switzerland is also exploring architectural solutions for new pedagogical concepts: how can built structures respond to the demands of all-day schooling, individual learning, teamwork or inclusive teaching and learning, and how does this affect the typology of school buildings, which has been more or less unchanged for the last 100 years? Has the traditional notion of a classroom run its course, as many have discussed, and should it be replaced by new teaching and learning environments?

At first glance, the new building for the Vinci Primary School in the small town of Suhr in Aargau, completed in 2018, seems to have gained little from this debate. The four-storey, temple-like freestanding building on a square plan contains eight “traditional” classrooms, four group rooms and a therapy room on each of the three upper floors. The ground floor houses a multi-purpose space, rooms for the teachers and, as a public facility, the town’s municipal library. The educational concept of the primary school is likewise more conservative and oriented around classroom work. Where the new building excels, however, is in its potential for future adaptation: considerable forethought has gone into the building design, which is based on a structural grid with modular elements. The building’s structure echoes its clear external form: the classrooms are arranged in a ring around the façades and surround the central atrium. The smallest unit is two bays wide and the space in this outer room zone can be subdivided freely by means of lightweight walls, making the school flexible for future adaptations. This flexibility also feeds back into the planning process: decisions regarding the subdivision of space could be kept open for a relatively long time.

To achieve this freely variable sequence of rooms, the architects developed a tailor-made loadbearing structure consisting of two rings of columns arranged around an expressive staircase in the atrium. The outer ring of columns in the plane of the façade are prefabricated and rigidly anchored. Their connection to the floor slabs acts in principle like a Vierendeel girder, which in addition to transferring the vertical loads also provides horizontal bracing. A second inner ring of concrete columns is the wall plane separating the room zone from the atrium. The in-situ concrete stairs bear only vertical loads from the atrium ceilings. The architects also avoided placing enclosed concrete escape stairs and riser shafts in the room zone in order to achieve optimum flexibility. The escape stairs are instead arranged beneath the two almost baroque-looking staircases in the atrium which lead outside as tunnel-like channels via the basement. As some 400 to 500 people may be in the building at any one time, two escape staircases were required. The stacked staircases – which start at each of the two entrances – wind from floor to floor in a massive double helix arrangement. Narrow-board formwork gives their fair-faced concrete surface a rhythmic surface texture. The concrete steps themselves have been merely sanded and painted. Tall concrete girders span the roof of the atrium with prefabricated glass block elements suspended between them. The architects decided against fitted furniture to allow for different furnishing options in the individual classrooms. Elements made of glass blocks between the atrium and the rooms ensure that light can enter the classrooms from both sides and gives the atrium a transparent appearance. For the floors, the architects have used a robust fired clinker brick, laid diagonally on the ground floor, highlighting the connection between the two entrances. On the upper floors, the brick is laid concentrically around the staircases. The principle of modularity governs not just the loadbearing structure and room divisions, but also the building services concept. The grid of the installations is shifted half an axis in relation to the construction grid and is visible as a regular plasterboard strip in the ceiling running perpendicular to the façade that houses both the luminaires and air vents. The panels between are filled with sound absorbent Heraklith wood-wool panels.

The architectural concept affords a high degree of adaptability through the combination of a structural grid, modularity and the absence of vertical concrete cores. In its current iteration it is tailored to the needs of the Vinci Primary School. Students and teachers can also use the central atrium, which connects all parts of the school, in a variety of ways. The staircases can, for example, be used for reading, working and teaching. The atrium and stairs serve not just as a circulation space, but also as a communication zone, playground and recreation area.

Originally published in Bauwelt 12.2019, pp. 20-27, abridged and edited for Building Types online, translated by Julian Reisenberger

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