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Architects: Singer Baenziger Architects
- Year: 2015
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Photographs:Christian Senti
Text description provided by the architects. This double pre-school or kindergarten facility and a recently completed gym serve as extensions of the school grounds to the east.
Separated from the surrounding single-family homes, the pre-school building reflects the orientation of the existing school structures. The staggered construction produces an entrance area with plenty of sunlight and a shady and well-protected outside space at the back of the building. The main entrance is covered and slightly set back.
With its colorful wooden exterior, the pre-school building holds its position against the much larger gym, asserting its own significance while making reference to the gym’s architectural expression. The cladding with its plum-colored planks and bright red timber slats gives the building a different appearance with each perspective.
The ground floor, built into the hillside, houses shared facilities such as toilets, equipment room, kitchen, and staff room. These rooms are located next to an access zone which doubles as a cloakroom and a multipurpose area overlooking the covered entrance area. As a semi-basement, the ground floor’s construction and appearance is solid, with exposed concrete structures contrasted by yellow wall elements, doors, magnetic walls and a stairway.
Rising above the hillside, the upper floor with its high ceilings houses the classrooms. A bright corridor with ceiling lights provides access to the centrally located group rooms and the main rooms to the sides, which offer views of the surroundings in three directions.
Wall and ceiling panels made from silver fir allow visitors to experience the cozy feel of the upper floor’s woodwork, creating a contrasting atmosphere to the ground floor’s concrete world.
The main rooms are designed to facilitate different usage scenarios. They can be subdivided in various ways with curtains and a mobile cabinet to create individual zones, or combined with one of the adjacent group rooms by opening up the sliding partition doors. The box-type windows, flush with the exterior, are deep enough to serve as alcoves.
Two loggias provide direct access to the outside from the main rooms on the upper floor. Top lighting and the surrounding slats from the exterior cladding create a clearly defined space which can be used as an exterior classroom.
