Within the constraints of an otherwise non-descript box, design studio JGMA has inventively designed an attractive and engaging transformation that provides a constrained space with multi-functional capacity, while reinforcing the identity of a visionary school. Working on a small renovation budget, the Ancona School in Chicago’s southside Hyde Park had been fighting loud reverberating acoustics and harsh lighting in their undersized gymnasium, making use of the space nearly unbearable. The room is much smaller than any typical gym–a retro-fit holdover from an out-dated 1960’s construction–but it houses many of the school’s primary athletic functions and is the only school space large enough for family gatherings and school performances.
The “theatre’s” particular cultural function, location and organisation in a historical building and the identity of the new school building are central to the project.
“Contrasts attract each other”
The attempt, in the 19th century, to open up the old riding school, is reflected in the new school building. It is reused and adapted in a contemporary current way. This use of contrasts – with different technologies, construction methods, materials and energy technologies – is also expressed through the reflection of the old building on the façade of the new school. This effect is reversed as soon as it gets dark, when the school building illuminates the old studio.
Tags: Austria, Wien Comments Off on Extension of the Lycée Français de Vienne and Renovation of the Studio Molière in Wien, Austria by Dietmar Feichtinger Architectes
The House of Music of Pieve di Cento was born out of the desire to create structures and spaces suitable for two programs: concert promotion and musical teaching in the municipality: the Music Society of Pieve and a Middle School with musical emphasis.
The programmatic values of the school believe in breaking away from the standard scholastic teaching system. The design embraces the creative enterprise of ‘flexible learning’ to cater to the needs of a heterogeneous group of learners. The site is a land with steep sloping natural topography and several existing trees making it an ideal setting for imparting educating in a green environment. The premise is designed to be safe and close knit yet completely flexible creating an encouraging and interactive environ.
Colégio dos Plátanos is a school in Sintra which educates children from the age of 3 to 14; the project consists of the expansion and reorganization of the school. Having acquired a set of low quality buildings east of the existing school, the client intended to demolish them and expand the school complex eastwards, adding a series of new classrooms, complementary spaces and sport facilities. During the design phase the client changed course and decided to maintain the east buildings and commissioned a new construction of smaller scale, connecting the east and west buildings that had to be built in two phases, allowing for a reduced investment since our country was facing an economic crisis and on the verge of the troika intervention (IMF, EC, ECB). This decision also required the development of an intermediate structural solution and controlled demolitions in order not to interrupt the daily school operation; only with the conclusion of the second phase will the entire complex be fully articulated.
The new Elementary School of Boischatel was built on the old municipal baseball field, beside the soccer field, and is surrounded by a wonderful wooden area. The building regroups twelve classrooms, two kindergartens, a daycare, a library, a computer laboratory, few administrative offices and a gymnasium which was designed to be doubled, if needed. The steel structure of this two storey school was conceived to receive twelve more classrooms and an extension of the gymnasium. The school was designed to allow the access of the gymnasium (and its services) to the citizens of the municipality after the working and teaching hours. The proximity of the school within the wooden area and its creek creates an inspiring environment for the students and the staff, giving the impression of a “tree house/classroom”.
The brief was to create a building that would provide a space for teaching music and drama and to celebrate and inspire students’ performance. This was a complex planning procedure as the site sits within the Green Belt and teaching was to be maintained during the demolition of the old block and new construction.
We recycle ideas, architectural concepts, structures, buildings, materials. We experiment with hybrids that step out from what exists and are transformed through new programs. How do you transform the former paper factory in Marzabotto into a place for culture, development and innovation? How do you recycle this old industrial plant into new life and uses? How do you give the Green Academy strong presence?
With approximately 16000m² of buildings and 21000m² of exteriors and landscape design, the Rochester School’s Master Plan aimed for a strategy which reflected its own concept of academic community. Thus, as a premise, the HUBS (grouping system) appeared, looking for an educational model that integrate teachers and students disregarding grades and therefore fading out the traditional hierarchy of school formation.
The structure, which maintains its continuity in the linear architecture, is aimed to create a space open to the active use of students and teachers by means of the large courtyard formed in the south by leaning to the northern edge of the land. The climatic characteristics of Urla have been taken into consideration and applications for planting have been foreseen in the sections facing the south pavement. However, such a study of the south pavement by the practitioner has not yet been carried out. It was aimed to break the monotonous inside and outside on the whole of the design by creating the level differences between the buildings and thus a dynamic composition was captured in the building which is a school. The structure in the physical environment in which it stands out in pure geometrical form is exhibiting a naive temperament in Urla’s traditional heritage.
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