As part of the Circlewood consortium, OMA’s David Gianotten and Michel den Otter have developed a modular system to build schools that can adapt and transform throughout their lifecycle. The system was selected by the City of Amsterdam to be employed to build multiple schools in the coming ten years, as part of the Innovation Partnership School Buildings program. The citywide initiative aims to build nine to thirty “high-quality, flexible, and sustainable” schools as a way to contribute to the city’s goal of becoming fully circular by 2050.
With OMA as the Creative Director of the initiative, the Circlewood collective of architects, engineers, and researchers has designed a system of standardized wooden columns and cross-laminated wooden floor panels connected by recycled steel joints. The system creates a wooden structural framework, allowing for freedom in the disposition of partition walls and non-load-bearing structures that create interior spaces of different sizes and uses. The partition walls are biobased and can support activities such as indoor climbing or vertical farming. The design and manufacturing process is digitally controlled to ensure fast assembly and disassembly using an electric crane on-site.
As the components are designed to be durable and adaptable, the modular system offers flexibility for schools to shape their learning environments. Furthermore, the designers have conceptualized this construction method as a pedagogical tool to help students better understand sustainability principles and the human impact on the environment. Information screens installed in the schools will show the carbon footprint and resource consumption. The prefabrication system also minimizes emissions during construction, biobased and carbon-absorbing materials are used throughout the school, and the building components can be fully reused to ensure adherence to circularity principles.
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OMA Wins Competition to Transform World’s Oldest Museum for the Ancient Egyptian Culture in Turin, ItalyUnder the Innovation Partnership Program, OMA will help with the selection of emerging architectural practices to collaborate with in the creation of individual schools. A pilot school in Amsterdam has been developed in collaboration with Studio A Kwadraat. The compact building aims to go beyond the traditional school program and offer instead an integrated children’s center. To reflect this, each façade is designed in response to specific needs, incorporating elements such as canopies or bike-storage facilities. A central hall allows for a variety of structured and unstructured activities, while the school retains its adaptability, flexibility in time, and focus on the final user, due to its “construction kit” building method.
With this system, the new schools that will be built in Amsterdam, and hopefully elsewhere in the Netherlands, can expand, downscale, or vary in configurations to respond to different needs over time. When a school closes, the building can be fully dismantled, and all the components become construction materials again. - Architect David Gianotten, OMA Managing Partner
Recently, OMA has won the competition to renovate the world’s oldest museum for Ancient Egyptian culture, the Museo Egizio founded in 1824 and housed in Collegio dei Nobili in Turin, Italy. During this year’s edition of Milan Design Week, OMA unveiled an installation commissioned by SolidNature that explores the journey of natural stone from its geological formation to the finished product used in interior design and architecture projects.
