In Aarwangen, we built a new primary school building on existing school grounds – thereby creating a new centre in the village. The new “Sonnhalde” is integrated among the existing buildings to form an ensemble that now clearly frames the terrain. Inside, the building is structured in an easily grasped way. The clear, spacious access areas can be transformed as required: learning is permitted everywhere.
The new building combines with the existing indoor swimming pool, the secondary school building and the multifunctional hall to create a new ensemble. Together with the sports field, it frames the grounds more clearly and also forms a new area for gatherings. Towards the street, the building – like a gateway – forms the entrance to the Sonnhalde campus; together with the old tree population, it creates a spacious green facility with playgrounds for the kindergarten. The entire facility’s enhancement is not only appreciated by the children, but also the entire community of Aarwangen.
To ensure that the new free-standing building is integrated into its surroundings, we chose joint-free in-situ cast concrete as the construction and façade material. It refers to the predecessor buildings from the 1960s. To structure the compact form of the building, the slightly projecting balustrade bands subdivide the building horizontally. The ventilation apertures are situated behind the window levels, thereby breaking up the strictly cuboid form.
Inside, the school building is structured in an easily grasped way: a deep incision in the building guides people towards the school entrance and leads to a very generous entrance space. All of the school’s levels and rooms are accessed from there. These include the library, kindergarten and workshop rooms on the ground floor; the upper levels above all accommodate the classrooms. By organising the two contrary-running stairs in a staggered way, the children and adults cross each level and, having ascended, change their direction and perspective. In doing so, they can look outside, but also inwards, since the continuous indoor space provides visual references in both directions, thereby facilitating orientation; this is further enhanced by the glass doors of the spacious, bright classrooms. Each classroom also has a large window towards the corridor, which can be used as a seating niche or a viewing spot. Since some teachers in any case teach with open doors or even move their lessons into the corridor, this fulfils the desire for openness and transparency.
The mobile and fold-away shelving is also helpful in this respect, as well as rolling tables and teaching equipment such as touchscreens. The glass surfaces with printed dot patterns are a playful detail that also assumes the role of wayfinding: on closer inspection, they reveal images of animals such as squirrels, red foxes and hares. The children can identify with their classrooms in this way.
Both in the classrooms and in the spacious corridor, many details underline the child-friendly design. For instance the perforated wooden panels with fitting wooden hooks allow children to divide their cloakroom wall according to their heights and individual preferences. The flooring, fittings and furniture are made of solid, robust and sustainable materials: such as the industrial parquet that gives the rooms on the upper level a workshop character, or the oak bench in front of the entrance, which was made of wood from the municipal forest. On the ground floor, both the corridor flooring and the stairs to the upper level consist of polished, black poured asphalt. The choice of these durable and therefore sustainable materials reduces their maintenance requirements; together with the wooden cladding made of ash and oak, they radiate a sense of warmth and security.
To allow the exposed concrete ceiling to be as visible as possible, the walls of the cloakrooms in the corridor were clad with perforated wooden acoustic boards, while the classroom walls were covered with veneer or wooden fitted shelving. The visible concrete ceilings have the advantage of acting as a storage mass, thereby considerably contributing to the comfortable atmosphere in the summer months.
The cool air induced by the controlled ventilation at night cools the ceilings. During the day, the ceiling cools the rooms. There is also the aspect of sustainability, since the individual building elements are more easily recycled. Furthermore, the aesthetics of the materials should be understandable. Thus we deliberately suspended the LED lighting directly from the concrete ceiling. To improve the illumination for the central corridor, a skylight opens up above the final flight of stairs. A band of lighting is also integrated into the handrail of the stairs.
The open character of the building creates an ideal learning atmosphere with diversely used and organised rooms for children and teaching staff. At the same time, the new building by Brandenberger Kloter Architekten creates an ensemble that forms a new school campus and a centre for the whole community.
Team:
Architects: Brandenberger Kloter
Photographer: Basile Bornand
