Description

Two key ideas formed the development of the design, firstly the cosmopolitan and slightly itinerant nature of the student intake. Over 400 boys and girls attending this private English language school come from more than 30 different countries. Most of their parents are employed in international companies and spend two or three years in the Zurich area at most. It was felt that the school had an important social role to play, not just for students, but for parents in helping to establish contact with other parents during their relatively brief stay. Secondly, the location of the site was neither urban nor suburban; rather it occupies a strange interface between an industrial zone and a golf course. The lack of any strong contextual identity was an important issue during the design development. Planning was carried out under tight deadlines and equally tight cost constraints. The school users participated by suggesting room arrangements and preferred layouts which were incorporated into the final designs by architects Galli & Rudolf. The school users also came up with other key principles regarding materials, colours, access and transparency, all of which were enthusiastically adopted by the architects. For example they expressed the wish to avoid right angles in the planning. This was achieved by a subtle twisting of the building’s grid to achieve functional spaces which are slightly non-orthogonal, thus increasing interest and variation to the classroom spaces without adding to the overall cost. Other principles such as the use of smooth coloured renders rather than brutal fair-faced concrete added to the sense of ownership the users felt with the architectural process.

The need to make a building which was not simply about education, but also about social interaction between parents emerged very quickly as the scheme was discussed. Rather than restricting access to the entrance areas, par­ents are encouraged to come into the building when collecting or delivering their children. The central part of the school is very open with a double-height multi-functional hall and library which are largely open and part of a promenade route through to the teaching blocks. This encourages a sense of engagement with lots of visual contact between users, staff students and parents. The central hall is full of light and has the main reception desk, a canteen and a parents’ association room, to further enhance the sense that this is owned by the parents as well as the students.

The main teaching spaces are grouped in clusters of six classrooms, each has its own small bathroom. Each cluster has a central group space which is used by different age ranges for social and informal study sessions. There are windows between classrooms and this community space, which enhances the sense of an open environment full of light and colour. The primary colour theme is carried out to the external architectural treatment with a light green render and dark red window frames giving the façades a distinctive appearance in this bland setting. The building is a new landmark promoting its own sense of identity to the surroundings to become a beacon for its multi-national users. It is almost childlike in its external form, reflecting the close involvement of the children, and inside it is full of bold primary colours matching the multi-cultural intake.

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