Description

Situated within a new southern suburb of Stavanger, Jåttå School for Vocational
Learning was designed for approximately 1000 pupils from age 13 to 19. It forms
a gateway, with a new stadium, to the Stavanger urban quarter, adjacent to the
fjord. The exterior is a large punctuated

timber-clad rectangle with double-height windows allowing the daylight deep into
the building. A dominant formal band encases the front of the building, which is
otherwise all glazed. The heart of the school – the main street with an
auditorium, canteen and resource centre – melts into a fluid course with green
views of atria and a roof garden as well as of workshops and spheres of
educational activity.

Most ingenious is the way in which this central main street becomes a sinuous
piece of landscape, flowing from the entrance up into the main hall. Planted
courtyards and atria provide sensory relief and views of greenery throughout the
school. These afford a variety of spatial experiences that support the adaption
of teaching methods to suit varied learning and teaching needs. The large atrium
slices right into the building, allowing even the spaces deep into the plan to
be flooded with natural daylight. The generous circulation spaces create
extensive internal recreation areas. Both factors are important in a country
where the winters are long and cold.

Jåttå School for Vocational Learning is one of the most innovative school
buildings in Norway, providing the framework for new and specific teaching
methods. The open and varying spatial sequences permit teaching methods to adapt
to various work scenarios, small group work space, larger meeting space and
quieter, more private situations.

The school in fact functions like a modern workplace with large open teaching
environments and workshops for special subjects. However, Jåttå Vocational
School is particularly striking in the way in which the architecture supports
the new teaching pedagogies. Designed by the architects as a ‘town within a
town’, the main street leads to a variety of separate learning spaces. The
central atrium and open-class spaces have much in common with Hellerup School in Denmark.
Both function along the principles of a modern generalised workplace, with large
open teaching spaces and more closed specialised subject teaching zones; both
are landmark projects within new residential areas and aim to be at the heart of
their

community. The voluminous central hall at Jåttå holds the big open stepped
auditorium area, the canteen, the library and the resource centre. The adjacent
individual departments have zones for teaching as well as work demanding more
concentration, thus complying with the individually adapted teaching methods.
The mixture of dedicated workshop bases and more informal teaching spaces is
very flexible, enabling teachers to adapt lessons to individual situations and
various learning needs.

This is enhanced by the variety in scale of adaptable space. Many of the classes
are taught in smaller student groups, which obviously calls for an improved
student-to-staff ratio. The desired choices of available teaching space and
flexibility of learning environment were key drivers of the design brief given
to the architects. The vocational nature of the subjects taught at the school
also favours those students with a lower academic disposition who prefer more
‘hands-on’ learning. Subjects at Jåttå cover a broad vocational range including
transport, building technology, health and sports sciences.

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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.