Berlin Metropolitan School
- Barbara Zettel
Copper-clad rooftop elements have been added to Berlin Metropolitan School in the centre of Berlin. The three wings of the existing, prefabricated, reinforced concrete building that was erected in 1987 are grouped around a large internal courtyard and lie within the protected area of Spandauer Vorstadt. Therefore, the only conceivable way of extending the school horizontally was to build on the courtyard. But by adding rooftop storeys to the northern and western wings as well as a four-storey extension in the south the architects from Sauerbruch Hutton have increased the school’s floor area by 3,500 m², while still keeping the courtyard for the roughly 1000 students. More than half of the new floor area is in the rooftop elements on Torstraße in the north and on the side wing in the west. They were built of solid timber. Timber hollow box floors span walls made from large cross laminated timber elements, the low dead weight of the new elements made additional foundations or alterations to the loadbearing structure unnecessary: the long facades and corridor walls of reinforced concrete take the loads of the existing building. Load reserves in the cross walls, which are just as strongly reinforced, carry the new storeys.
