Login
Registered users
In 2015, Gloggnitz held a competition for a future-focused school complex that would bring together the small Austrian town’s three schools in one location.
Dietmar Feichtinger Architectes won with a design for an open, inclusive school. The ground floor of the school symbolizes this openness, with the entire perimeter glazed, creating a pronounced sense of permeability between indoors and outdoors.
Wood is the dominant material here. The laminated self-supporting ceilings and floors are timber in every room, including the classrooms. The facade framing is formed by wood-aluminum profiles. Finally, the sections of the building most exposed to direct sunshine are protected by sunscreens, also made of wood.A cornerstone of this new school’s ambitious education program is its focus on sports. This has become a defining element of its architecture, with its three sports areas – which have ceilings reaching almost 26 feet (8 meters) in height – forming the nucleus of the entire design.
The ground floor is a public area, with two student cloakrooms located off the entrance. All the classrooms are arranged in a circle around the central sports areas, with the stairs and elevators located around the edges of the building.
On the top floor, there is an external courtyard comprising light-colored timber decking interspersed with prism-shaped volumes intended to break up the courtyard into different spaces, and provide natural light and ventilation to the gyms on the floor below.
