Denmark and Sweden are the two EU countries that invest the largest amount of money in education. It comes as no surprise that they boast advanced school concepts. Yet, the amount of available funds for building schools is limited. In 2016 C.F. Møller Architects won the competition for the new educational facility and had to employ a number of tricks in order to meet the budget.
Special kind of school structure
In Copenhagen, the city authority determines the topical orientation of all municipal schools. This can include natural sciences and languages, political sciences and sociology. In the Islands Brygge Skole, exercise and diet are the education focus. A teaching kitchen allows 12 to 16 year old pupils to experience what healthy nourishment means in theory and practice. The large dining table permits culinary testing of the results of their studies. The same applies to visitors: In the evenings and on weekends, the kitchen is open to external users for cooking courses. For the majority of students, lunch is prepared in a separate professional kitchen. Its glass walls enable views inside. Children assist staff on a rotating basis and gain insight on how to professionally prepare meals.
At the table
The central dining hall is the most important meeting point and the place where all functions of the school come together. At noon, it is fully occupied in a quick and surprisingly quiet manner. The two storey space and its gallery, the niches with washbasins, and most of all the triangular floor plan reduce noise effectively. Students can enter the dining hall for lunch in three shifts. Beyond the dining tables, the gymnasium invites views inside. Situating both on the same floor was decided initially due to costs, since there is no basement level. Either from the urban space or from the dining hall, everybody can see when the boys and girls exercise or stay in the hall during recess. The fundamental activities of cooking, eating, exercising all take place within one visual context. The skylight band above the dining hall enables views of the mirrored ceiling above the outdoor staircase, along which cars rushing by turn into a pattern of colourful dots.
School on the roof
The green outdoor staircase with its concrete seating steps and glittering underside indicates the roof access. The roof surface winds upward along three storeys and, in its entirety, serves for exercising, relaxing and learning. Here, workbenches are situated in front of craft rooms that also offer the opportunity for outdoor classes. Each room features an access to the roof. Children and teachers alike can use this shortcut in order to move quickly from one room to the next. The greenhouses serve for growing tomatoes. Adolescents play ball on the fenced-in sports fields. During recess, they can recline in hammocks or train their muscles along climbing frames. They also enjoy a fantastic view of the city or the Amager Fælled nature reserve and its lush vegetation. Plants and herbs grow on the school roof in troughs and convey the impression of a park. The colour green reappears in the curved patterns of the paving, interrupted by numerous horizontal glass surfaces. These skylights allow daylight to enter the interior of the building.
Light and views, learning and running
The interiors receive sufficient natural daylight, with the exception of the dining hall, due to being situated in the building centre. For this purpose, it was equipped with daylight lamps and pendant luminaires. The visual connection to the exterior exists here as well and provides a degree of spatial openness that continues upward along the gallery and the library, as well as the adjacent teacher's lounge. On the gallery, between bookshelves, work desks offer places for learning. Bar stools, sitting niches or upholstered furniture placed in different areas within the school building suggest different types of learning environments. The teaching rooms are situated on the two topmost floors. The natural sciences are located on the floor above the languages and humanities departments. All of them feature round tables that consume only a minimum of space and foster teamwork. Instead of classes, subjects are assigned to the teaching rooms. Thus, children need to move on after class - movement is a requirement here as well.
For the open learning zones, encircled by the teaching rooms, the architect team designed curved furniture that permits a variety of uses - for standing, sitting or reclining, in groups or individually. Here, just as in any other place in the building, views are offered to the exterior - through glass partition walls facing the city, or through the skylights to the sky above.
On stage
The auditorium is a special feature of the school and can be booked by external users. The space is 6 m tall and glazed along two sides. It can be darkened completely as required. The top of the grandstand terminates in front of a glass wall. A meeting room with a large table is situated behind it and used for teachers' conferences or neighbourhood meetings. Music rooms are located adjacent to it, equipped with a diverse range of instruments. A separate audio recording studio is available. Practice is key, also within music lessons. A large folding structure allows opening the music hall to the auditorium, creating a spatial connection that supports different types of performance.
City, harbour, field
Three different areas surround the school: The Amagar Fælled nature park to the east, the former harbour facilities to the west and residential construction in the north and south. The school borders the site of a former factory with dark steel facades, now housing luxury apartments. The gentrification of Islands Brygge and its former harbour installations is in full swing. The school design aims at connecting to the local history with three differently designed entrances that also feature corresponding names: city, harbour, field (Fælled). The latter is made of timber. The entrance facing the harbour consists of rusty steel, and the one oriented toward the city displays slender reinforced concrete columns and a glittering underside. The degree of openness the school displays is impressive. All entrances remain open during daytime. Anyone who chooses to do so can access the roof. No one is afraid of intruders - revealing a kind of everyday school life that allows a great degree of freedom without focusing exclusively on conveying knowledge.
How do nutrition and exercise inform everyday school life?
We structure school days according to modules. Following a double period spanning 90 minutes, children have a 30 minute recess break. During this time, they can exercise on the roof or in the gymnasium. We have three different lunch shifts preventing that everybody attempts to eat lunch at the same time. 7th grade students help out in the professional kitchen for one week. During this time, they have no classes, but instead learn how to prepare a healthy and tasty meal with sustainably produced ingredients. The children of the other grades have home economics class in the teaching kitchen, where they also learn how to cook. This is part of the curriculum.
Is cultivating fruit and vegetables also part of the curriculum?
The children grow herbs and tomatoes in the greenhouses. In the Danish school system, we don't have a curriculum in the traditional sense. We do have superordinate teaching topics, such as our societal values and protecting the natural environment. Otherwise, teaching topics tend to be specific. Each school is at liberty what it teaches and how. The aim is for children to succeed in the final exams, which are the same everywhere.
Anyone who wants to, can access the roof. The entrances remain open during the day. What is your experience with this openness?
Schools and public squares in Denmark are accessible to all. During the previous school year, we closed the rooftop access at six o'clock in the evening. This year, everybody can go up there. We are curious to see what exactly will happen during summertime. We will surely have to clean up. The school building for the 6 to 11 year olds is separate, yet still part of the Islands Brygge Skole. It features open green spaces and playgrounds. Families meet there to chat and play. Of course, adolescents loiter there to drink beer, as well. Our open society offers a diverse range of opportunities, as do our buildings.
The school features areas that are also available to external users, such as the auditorium, the craft rooms or the kitchen. How does that work?
For the school, it is no problem at all. We know who uses which spaces and how we can motivate people to return and clean up afterwards. Of course, there are teachers who feel irritated when, for instance, they have to make room in the kitchen for the evening cooking courses. But it is a tradition in Denmark to make educational facilities available to all age groups.
How much input were you able to provide within the planning process?
We provided plenty of input in terms of furniture. It was important to us that all teaching rooms have a different character. This is why there are sofas in some rooms and closed study boxes in others. The children are supposed to be able to study in a diversified environment, either while seated or standing. If they need a break, they can rest on the deep, upholstered window sills. Some teachers think this is strange. It would be great if the architects would visit every now and then to remind us how some spaces and pieces of furniture can be used. Appropriating the architecture time and again is an ongoing process. We would benefit from this kind of exchange. The architects certainly as well.
