RUSSIA’S SMART SCHOOL MEADOW
16 September 2015
Architecture firm CEBRA has won first place for their design for a new ‘smart’ school to be constructed in Russia. The educational facility comprises a unique design that houses a meadow at its centre.
CEBRA’s winning design for a fully integrated smart school, labeled Smart School Meadow, is an enterprising proposal that incorporates a range of learning facilities for students aged between three and eighteen years of age. It also includes community facilities such cultural, leisure and health centres that can be utilised by the general public, fully integrating the school with the community’s needs.
With the aim of creating “a new kind of school”, CEBRA has designed a 49 acre campus to be located in Irkutsk, Russia, which focuses on bringing the landscape into the complex, incorporating nature into the learning environment.
The semi-covered building will provide multifunctional facilities for classrooms and flexible teaching spaces, as well as communal areas for the expected 1040 students and 400 staff the school can accommodate.
CEBRA’s design proposes an arrangement of structures that form a connected ring around a landscaped meadow. CEBRA co-founder Carsten Primdahl claims, “the gaps between the buildings along the ring make the meadow both visually and physically accessible from the outside, and allow for activities to diffuse between the meadow and the surrounding landscape."
Uniting the ring of structures will be a white ridge roof, which will also provide shelter between the buildings. Differences in the height and size of the roof structure will serve as indicators for the varying functions of the buildings. Overall the complex is designed to be multifunctional, encouraging movement between the spaces based on differing needs.
"The ring is frayed at the edge, so to speak, so that the cantilevering roof in combination with the individual buildings' offset volumes creates a series of semi-covered niches, activity zones, learning environments and flow areas, which provide spaces for a variety of activities in the transition between building and landscape”, claim the architects.
A part of the site will also contain a housing development for orphaned children attending the school to live with their foster families.