Pre-reading Discussion. 1. What kind of buildings do architects design now?

1. What kind of buildings do architects design now?

2. How does modern school building look like?

3. Do you agree that architectural competition helps to find the best variant for building?

4. What are the differences between Khrushchev’s, Stalin’s, Brezhnev’s and modern buildings?

5. When was your school built?

The design of schools and other public buildings is usually the outcome of an architectural

competition. Our practice gained a number of commissions in this way in the early years. The first school we

designed was in school in Stuttgart, the

gymnasium in Goppingen and various other schemes.

In the early 70 s, school design was not encumbered very much by ideology. The aim was to build liberal,

open places of learning, in which one responded to local and social conditions. In the late 1980s, ideological

aspects came to assume a greater role. Schools for all-day instruction were required to provide a place of

education separate from the parental home. Imparting knowledge became part of the production process, and in

the end, teachers and children were cut off from the outside world in artificially lighted and ventilated "production

spaces".

During this period, we were commissioned to design the school as a central

facility serving a rural catchment area with four smaller communities. The brief required that the partitions

between classrooms could be easily moved to allow the creation of larger or smaller spaces. In other words, one

wanted a building that would meet all possible contingencies, even hitherto unknown ones. We met these requirements

minimally, while attempting to implement our own ideas of democratic architecture.

Our approach was based on a concept of mutual respect and individuality in a society with common values,

yet free of compulsion. One expression of this was, that the teaching spaces should not be standardised. They

derive their quality from their situation and the special functions they have to fulfil. The areas commonly taken

up by long, boring corridors were combined to create a hall space around which the classrooms are laid out. Externally,

the building has an introspective appearance; internally, it is open and multivalent in nature, accommodating

many school activities as well as providing space for local societies and groups.

In the late 1990s, we planned an elementary school and, the same municipality

commissioned us to design a secondary school, an elevated area of land overlooking

the town. Again, the classrooms are laid out around a two-storey hall space, and the rooms are not rectilinear.

On the ground floor,

the ring of spaces opens out to the north, where the main entrance, special classrooms, teachers' areas and other

zones are situated. Although the geometry of the load-bearing structure lends the development a strict underlying

order, the subordinate systems do not have to follow this.

At the beginning of the 1990s, we realised a further secondary school. The distinguishing

qualities of this building are a sensible use of materials, a logical form, and diversity in unity. Underlying

this concept, there was also the aim to make all the elements of the building individually legible. Instead of

choosing a circular form, which had caused certain problems in the earlier school, we based the

layout on an equilateral triangle, a geometric shape that, in its own way, is as "self-centred" as the circle and

that imposes similar demands. The triangular hall again forms the centre of the complex. Here, however, the

classrooms are laid out on only two sides - those that offer beautiful views over the valley. Along the third, north-facing side of the triangle, there is a broad glazed wall,

through which the hall space opens on to the forest.

The more recent school buildings we have created are, of course, based on experience gained in those early

years. The school for the educationally disabled lies in a long, green meadow close to

the town centre. We inserted the structure into the gently sloping site in such a way that each of the two storeys

would be directly accessible from ground level. The strongly articulated layout is an expression of the internal

situation. The various rooms are divided into small tracts that are oriented to the outside world, to the sunshine

and the meadows. Internally, these spaces enclose a small hall, which forms the focus of the school.

The commercial training college is also located in meadow-like surroundings. Here,

however, the situation on the outskirts of town is dominated by quite different elements: the shopping centre and a number of trade undertakings. In this heterogeneous environment,

we planned an autonomous complex that is itself meant to lend a new character to the location. The tall,

two-floor circular structure on a plinth storey turns its back on the autobahn and addresses the town. The classrooms

are oriented to the outside. Within the circular structure are stairs, ancillary and a large, threestorey

hall. The egocentric nature of circular forms tends to impose its own laws on subsidiary elements, and a

large part of the design work was a product of the dialectic with these constraints. Since the glazed facade to the

internal courtyard had a closed appearance, the painter was commissioned to dissolve this skin

visually with a bold colour design to the dividing walls between the classrooms and the corridor.

The new gymnasium in Dresden, erected in 1996, occupies a site subject to heavy traffic disturbance.

The classrooms, screened by a long wall, turn their back on the noisy road and are open to the west. On

the upper levels of this four-storey building, the rows of classrooms are articulated into three groups. To the

west, the teaching spaces are faced by tall blocks of flats. To ameliorate this situation, the classroom tracts were

turned slightly away from the housing development, thereby avoiding a direct confrontation. The main entrance

is set back somewhat from the major road junction, creating an open space that mediates between the traffic and

the school. The animated plan form and the colour design were also generated by the specific

circumstances of the location. In the school, art achieves a high degree of autonomy. It is no longer a

mere accessory to the architecture, but may be seen as a work in its own right. The form of the new

school was not an expression of tight site boundaries. The city provided an attractive site

close to an area of open landscape. The design foresaw a series of buildings with linking corridors, halls, open

workplaces, and gardens outside the classrooms.

For the European Professional Training Institute, we also found an open site at the transition

between the town and the countryside. Here, we designed a lively scheme that is embedded in the urban environment

and dissected by landscape elements. The various functional zones are scattered about the site, providing

a quality of openness towards the activities they house, towards the landscape and other buildings. The diversity

required of school structures emerges in the design process when one addresses the many special needs involved,

when one avoids constraints imposed from above, and when one ensures that a new development does not, in

turn, impose its own restrictions on others. Our articulacy as individuals and our integration in society are united

in a single whole if the architectural elements can be seen as individual and articulate in themselves. Architecture

mirrors the diversity of our world and also reflects our concern that it may be lost.