Gymnasium Kolkwitz

The school building and triple sports hall create a striking, memorable location in the enlarged woods of Klein-Gaglow. The light, pre-weathered wooden façade enhances the building's profile and the interplay between nature and architecture. The proximity to the forest and the trees that change with the seasons characterises the atmosphere in the building and in the schoolyards. The compact, spatially defining shape of the school building creates usable, generous outdoor spaces on a minimal footprint.
The school building is designed in accordance with the educational concept of the four years of secondary level I, with a spacious central staircase and short, clear routes for pupils and teachers. The year groups are organised in clusters of four classrooms each, centred around a ‘year group forum’ that receives daylight through the open-plan group rooms and determines the pupils' identification with their cluster. The cluster structure determines the shape of the building.
The compact school building is designed as a low-resource, simple and economical reinforced concrete structure with columns and bracing stairwell cores. Infill spaces are filled with thermally insulated cavity bricks. The shape of the building provides an optimal envelope factor, which minimises the expected energy consumption. Reinforced concrete, insulating bricks and pre-weathered wood ensure a resource-saving building with the desired sustainability.