Schulhaus und Gemeindezentrum, Belmont

Project Description

The design aims for more than a mere extension of the school building. Instead it reinforces the character and the status of the existing complex as a public space, school and community centre.

The building works as a “vertically connecting structure”, by linking the existing levels and usages through an interplay with the particular topography of the site. In addition, the outdoor pathways have been extended. These connections restructure the access to the school spatially and create additional outdoor spaces. The roofed school yard now forms the main entrance to the school towards the village.

The new building takes up the formal and material vocabulary of the existing building and presents itself as a large spatial grid of exposed concrete with a mineral appearance. This “automatic” form is the result of the given dimensions of the existing building with its various floor heights. The project brings together the different levels of the existing complex and binds them into the new elements.

The façade – visually permeable and a stage for constant fluctuations – plays with staging an element from everyday domestic life: the curtain, which can be perceived alternately as a veil, shading and an element set in motion.