Description

In the 1980s a Rudolf Steiner School was built in Confignon, a popular residential community to the south-west of Geneva with a population of around 4,600, thanks to the initiative of some parents and the provision of a plot of land by a private individual. Its architect was Jean-Jaques Tschumi, a grand-nephew of the architect Jean Tschumi, who had studied Waldorf education and designed the school building in Confignon, giving it a corresponding architectural form. The most striking feature is the classroom wing, whose cellular series of six classrooms plus two ancillary spaces per floor employs naturalistic forms and arcs with the course of the sun, interrupted only by a spiral staircase and round, wooden building for the teachers at its centre. The classrooms are connecting by a “flowing” access corridor that is open to the courtyard and sculpturally shaped. “Over the past few years, it became increasingly apparent that we needed more space for teaching, without increasing the number of pupils,” explains the architect Antoine Robert-Grandpierre of the firm Localarchitecture Lausanne, whose children attend the Rudolf Steiner School. He and his team were commissioned to plan an extension. The decision was made to add a further storey to the classroom wing, not just because it would have been difficult to add an adjacent building on the existing plot but also because Tschumi had probably envisaged the possibility of adding a storey from the outset.

Further impetus for the decision to add a storey followed from an analysis of the existing structure. To place the timber structure of the new storey on Tschumi’s concrete structure, along with an open access corridor to the individual classrooms as on the floors below, individual wooden beams were placed on the existing concrete supports and beams in the courtyard area. The new beams provided a stable base for the new concrete ceiling and serve to signal the transition from concrete to wood.

The new extension is made entirely of wood and builds on the existing Waldorf architecture while giving it a new expression. It echoes the arrangement of classrooms on the floors below and introduces a new, jagged modulation to the courtyard façade, as opposed to the rounded, flowing forms on the lower floors. The open gallery, classroom walls and roof overhang therefore have a different “eurythmic flow” to the existing building. The monopitch roof and angled supporting brackets of the gallery lend it a syncopated rhythm that differs from that of the classrooms as it widens and narrows. The classroom walls are turned by 15° altering their spatial feel without impacting significantly on their overall outline and volume. All the rooms face outwards and look over the landscape, their roofs sculpturally formed to create a faceted hood comprised of nine planes. The use of wood and the canopy along their perimeter give them a different impression to the plastered wall surfaces of the classrooms below.

The new classrooms are illuminated by a single window onto the courtyard and several skylights in the folded surface of the ceiling. In addition, upright-format windows on the outer façade offer views of Mont Selève outside Geneva. Arranged in groups of four above the irregular window forms of the floors below, they create a calming crown to the building. A further spatial and creative installation was added to the building in the form of a glazed enclosure around the well of the central spiral staircase, which has been given its own ornamental expression. The children were able to experience the addition of the new storey during the construction phase. This participative approach was intended not just as a learning experience but also to involve them in the process and help them identify with their new building. Regular tours of the construction site allowed them to see how an idea for a form and purpose takes on real shape.

Originally published in Bauwelt 2.2020, pp. 42-45, abridged and edited for Building Types online, translated by Julian Reisenberger

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