PSLA ARCHITEKTEN - Maximize the spatial synergies: Educational Campus Berresgasse
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Maximize the spatial synergies: Educational Campus Berresgasse

PSLA ARCHITEKTEN

Education  /  Completed
PSLA ARCHITEKTEN
Educational Campus as Kaleidoscope
In terms of the urban fabric, Berresgasse Educational Campus can be seen as the starting point (or finishing point) of the future district, which is being developed to the west and will be home to more than 3,000 apartments as well as offices, shops and leisure facilities.
The objective of the project is to maximise the spatial synergies both between the local area and the campus and within the campus itself. This will allow the new educational campus to position itself as a laboratory and a testing station for new educational practices – in a similar way to a kaleidoscope.
The multifaceted, north-south oriented volume of the educational campus meanders across the site, creating three different and contrastingly treated external areas: a publically accessible, v-shaped forecourt of over 3,000 m² that is located on the street to the west, a richly planted area facing the detached houses, which consists of over 10,000 m² of shared, exclusively open green space for the campus, and a third area on Berresgasse that is dominated by the sports hall and the multipurpose hard court.
The large building complex is organised into a sequence of easily recognisable and manageably scaled learning clusters, each of which has a separate entrance and is clearly legible in its urban context.
A learning cluster (Bildungsbereich or BiBer) is an autonomous group of classrooms and ancillary spaces organised around a central common area. This approach enables the relatively large number of 44 classrooms to be grouped together in a series of smaller and more manageable spatial units that strengthen the notion of cooperation between groups and classes. The incorporation of working areas (team rooms) for teaching staff ensures that these BiBers become autonomous organisational units.
The building is organised into a base-like ground floor containing all the general spaces that form no direct part of the learning clusters, the four two-storey learning clusters of the kindergarten and primary school, which occupy the first and second floors, and the two horizontally laid out learning clusters of the new middle school, which are located on the third floor.
In morphological terms, the building undergoes a pyramid-like reduction from the rectangular ground floor to the strongly articulated volume at the fourth level. This results in a total of around 2,000 m² of generous, interconnected terraces at all upper levels, some of which contain islands of rich greenery that effectively expand the garden in a third dimension.
This overall organising principle leads to a strong constructional differentiation between the building’s upper stories, which are very different from the two neighbouring typologies – detached houses and streetfront blocks – in terms of scale. Given the size of the site, this gives the project an independent character and a dimension that are appropriate for an educational campus.
The building can be seen as a symbiosis of a range of typologies: a hybrid of a terraced, slab, bridge and hall structure. This is the first completed school project of this scale that has consciously replaced the orthogonal organisation of the classrooms with a radial, windmill-like configuration that enhances the relationship of the spaces with each other and with the urban context.
This kaleidoscope-like expression of the overall organisation of the educational campus gives these learning clusters the strong autonomous sense of being key places of learning for the pupils.
This is also the first time that a kindergarten has been connected with a primary school via a central, hall-like two‐storey atrium, which is oriented in every direction. These learning clusters are separated by three staircases, each of which has a separate ground floor entrance from the forecourt on the street.
The central common areas in the atria of the individual BiBers (learning clusters) can be used in a wide variety of ways: Their different zones permit age-specific interaction but also encourage a sense of community within a “BiBer family” that transcends the wide age-difference.
With a height of over seven metres these atria maximise visual and spatial connections while also generating sufficient opportunities for retreat and concentrated work with the help of curtains, seating galleries, mobile partitions and “reduced” room heights of just 2.2 m; some common areas offer views out into the surrounding area while others, which form internal balconies immediately adjacent to each primary school classroom, are oriented towards the heart of the atrium.
All the classrooms are organised diagonally while each of the star-shaped learning clusters is illuminated by daylight from every direction. The articulation of the volume, the position of the “jumping” windows and the design of the playhouses in the kindergarten group rooms and the fitted furniture in the classrooms ensure that the building complex, with its alternating horizontal and vertical larchwood slatted façade, is a lively home from home for the pupils and pedagogues of Berresgasse Educational Campus

Credits

 Vienna
 Austria
 City of Vienna
 08/2019
 19281 mq
 PSLA ARCHITEKTEN
 Lilli Pschill, Ali Seghatoleslami, Aiste Ambrazeviciute, Christopher Ghouse, Andreas Hradil, Marc Werner, Anna Barbieri, Andreas Metzler, Roland Basista
 PORR Bau GmbH
 EGKK Landschaftsarchitektur (landscape architecture) FCP Fritsch, Chiari und Partner ZT GmbH (structural design, building physics, fire safety), rhm GmBH (HVAC), TB Eipeldauer (electrical planning)
 Nora Flooring, Zumtobel Lighting, Kvadrat Textiles, Fürst Holzbau Facade, Rieder Facade
 Lukas Schaller

Curriculum

PSLA is a Vienna-based studio operating in the fields of
contemporary architecture,
urban planning, interior design and product design.

Founded:
PSLA ARCHITEKTEN since 2013/ Collaboration since 2008

Founding Members:
Lilli Pschill / Born 07.02.1973 in Vienna - Austria
Ali Seghatoleslami / born 23.07.1975 in Teheran - Iran

Education:
Lilli Pschill : Technische Universität Wien, Diplom 2000
Ali Seghatoleslami: Technische Universität Wien,
Architectural Association London, Diplom 2002

Projekte Realisiert/ Selection:
Lawyers Office Falkestrasse, Wien, 2008
Refurbishment Apple/ Mc Shark Stores, Wien, 2009
Attic conversion Eckpergasse, Wien, 2010
Bildungscampus Sonnwendviertel*, Wien, 2014
Restaurant Steirereck*, Wien, 2014
Refurbishment, Mailberg AT, 2017
Bildungscampus Berresgasse, Wien, 2019

https://www.psla.at

Tag

#Finalist #Austria  #Reinforced concrete  #Education  #Wood Cladding  #Vienna  #PSLA ARCHITEKTEN 

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