Description

There are no corridors at all at Raholt Secondary School – instead one encounters an open flowing series of spaces. 420 pupils aged 13–15 attend this lower secondary school, conceived as glazed pavilion floating above the surrounding rural and agricultural landscape. Raholt is an agricultural area located 60km outside Oslo. The need for a secondary school in this area was particularly important due to perceived problems of young people having to travel further afield to go to school. The creation of such a vibrant learning environment is a strong social statement. The architect Kristin Jarmund explained: ‘We have built a tiny city covered by a big roof for the youth of this rural community – a real alternative to getting on a train for half an hour, going to Oslo and landing in trouble. We find to our great pleasure that the kids in Raholt take pride in their school and sense that their needs, dreams and ambitions have been taken seriously by educators, politicians and architects alike.’

Raholt Secondary School forms a 75 x 75m ‘perfect’ square plan with a large central courtyard. Four additional long narrow external courtyards are cut into the structure from the external edge of building. These inverse spaces allow for additional daylight to penetrate deep into the building, flooding it with light. The school is made up of three main learning areas, each with a large elliptical and brightly coloured tower denoting the centrally placed small auditoria in each learning area. They puncture the roof slab, boldly advertising the contemporary and innovative feel of the school. The building is designed as a village, with houses for teachers, specialist silent working areas and auditoria. There are no formal classrooms, but open learning zones punctuated with colourful insertions that denote specialist work areas. The balance between openness and enclosure is particularly well-organized at Raholt. Specialist areas allow focused learning activities to take place in an appropriate space specifically designed for that purpose. The three auditoria can hold up to 120 pupils and allow a year group to congregate for briefing and multi-media presentations. Small, quiet and intimate workspace ‘corrals’ allow students to work alone or in small groups, without interruption, allowing the open learning areas to accommodate the natural liveliness of pupils in larger groups. The more open-plan school is still taking time to get used to with teachers being supported in actively learning how to use the building, how to get the most out of it. It is clear that the teachers have had to adapt their pedagogy to the new spaces.

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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.