The steamer metaphor and references to the sea nearby are reflected in the school’s educational programme. The children learn to kayak and swim in the neighbourhood’s canals and gain first-hand knowledge of marine biology as well. To this end the architects installed a timber and boat workshop as well as changing rooms and storerooms below the external staircase. At the foot of the stairs a jetty was created in a newly excavated canal.
In accordance with Copenhagen educational policy the school is conceived as a public place. The ground floor, courtyard and lowest roof terrace are accessible to the public and the specialist music and science classrooms are used by other organisations and further education courses after school hours. This is why they are located closest to the main entrance. In the rear of the ground floor is an open auditorium with wide concrete seating steps that merges seamlessly into the school canteen. This school does not merely have a dedicated teaching kitchen where the children learn to cook; they also take turns in helping prepare lunch in the school’s professional canteen kitchen every day.
One would assume the school’s reception area would be at the entrance but it is actually on the first floor, which serves as the building’s administrative centre. The staff room and library are also housed here, as well as a dentist’s surgery with four treatment rooms. In Denmark educational institutions are responsible for the dental health of minors. Given that in many other older buildings there often isn’t enough space, children from other schools are also treated here.
An age-adapted and flexible spatial concept
The classrooms are located in the building’s three top stories and are therefore shielded from the public. Since the architects won the international competition for the new school in 2006 it’s this part of the building that has probably experienced the greatest change in use. The building design allowed for a maximum of 840 pupils in 30 classes ranging from the first to the ninth school year. The interiors and furnishings were designed to respond to the children’s phase of development. The second floor is dedicated to the youngest age groups and subsequently the pupils are intended to ‘make their way’ up the building. In the meantime, however, this concept became obsolete: Instead of three classes per grade level, the school went into operation in 2015 with four. The most recent enrolment class has as many as seven first year classes. For this reason the city plans to build an extension across the street for older students. Sports lessons are also held outside the main building.
Despite the change in occupancy the building’s varied spatial and circulation design concept is impressive. The common areas outside the classrooms are unusually generous and equipped with small kitchens, seating alcoves and small playhouses that serve as intimate retreats. For the younger students there’s a large communal cloakroom and an exercise room with mats and a climbing wall on the second floor, which is visible through a glass wall. Although the building has four fire escapes, most of the children and teachers prefer to use the large inter-connecting staircases on a daily basis. These are laid out so that you almost automatically walk through the entire building as you go up. The delicate atrium staircase, for example, which is suspended from the roof, only leads from the first to the third floor, and the two lowest and two highest stories are connected by separate wide staircases with seating steps.
One building, two climates
When selecting the materials for the project, the architects opted for robustness and a strong recognition factor. The ground floor was given a bare concrete finish. On the first floor there’s strip parquet and on the levels above the concrete floors have a polyethylene coating. The latter is blue on the second floor and green further up the building. Almost all wall and ceiling surfaces are treated acoustically. The sound insulation is hidden behind perforated, white painted metal panels, impregnated pine wood slats and ceiling panels made of dark grey, perforated corrugated iron. For ease of maintenance and flexibility, the ceiling lights and their supply lines are integrated in linear rail systems.
A discreet play of colours unfurls across the school’s façades but depends strongly on where you view it from. Behind a cladding of U-shaped aluminium sections mineral facade panels have been mounted. They are printed with graphic quotations in shades of green and blue, thus picking up on the internal colour palette.
The air conditioning concept for the school distinguishes between two areas. In the classrooms temperature, blinds, lighting and mechanical air supply are all carefully controlled by sensors. If necessary, students can still open individual windows by hand. In other parts of the building there is less rigid climate management with natural ventilation, no automatic controls and more fluctuating room temperatures as a result. The dual strategy is designed to save energy and expose users to changing environmental stimuli. At night the building is cooled naturally. Individual windows, classroom doors and parts of the glass roof over the atrium open up and cool night air flows through the building.
