Description

Neufahrn is a growing town with a large residential community which required a new secondary school. The architectural approach has evolved from a careful analysis of the site conditions combined with the stylistic influences of the wider town context, with its eclectic range of architectural styles. The land selected for the development was an edge-of-town site with a noisy motorway ring road on one side, a railway line and a sports ground along the other two sides. On the only quiet side, to the east, there is a former gravel pit which has been flooded to form an attractive bathing lake. The new structure is in the form of a three- and four-storey inhabited wall which separates the noisy functions from the potentially calm sanctuary of the lakeside setting; the wall is a vast horseshoe shape which is 100 metres across. It not only provides for the bulk of the school’s accommodation, but also encloses the open space in front of the lake.

This strong response to the site, with the new building curving away from the noise and embracing the lake, is a gesture which is carried through into the detail design. The ‘hard’ outer side is where all the school’s noisy functions occur; circulation corridors and stairs, storage and washrooms help to form a protective wrapping around the inner core of classrooms which are all orientated towards the ‘softer’ lake side. Thus the classroom façades are highly glazed well-ventilated rooms, with views onto the inner court. By contrast, the outer walls are less open, with a mixture of aluminium cladding panels, rendered blockwork, horizontal metal sun shades and meshes panels, which shade and secure the façades. From a distance the curving wall with its reflective metallic surfaces shimmers in the afternoon sun, welcoming and protecting at the same time.

On the inside, the façade treatment is less interesting, consisting of almost continuous horizontal bands of curtain walling. Here the building expresses its functional role as a straightforward ‘machine for learning’, with one architectural aberration: there is a dramatically fragmented music building, which has detached itself from the wall and ‘landed’ in the courtyard garden. It is a deliberate compositional gesture, mediating between the formality of the wall idea and the semi-natural landscape beyond. It is built of heavy-duty fair-faced concrete, the fragmented internal shape providing good acoustics for music and recording purposes. However, the logic of its shape is as a counterpoint in this rich architectural composition, an expression of the idea that individual creativity, within the framework of disciplined orthodoxy (as seen within the main school block) is the key component of the whole school vision.

The result is a building which is not just practical, providing state-of-the-art accommodation in an economical form, but is also highly faceted and inspirational. Whilst the drawbacks of the site were self-evident from the outset, the new building helps to create a new sense of place. Even if some of the travel distances between classrooms may be rather long, the layout is legible and the generously proportioned circulation areas, with subtle side and top lighting, promote the social dimension for staff and students moving around.

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