Week 9 Exemplar - Building material

The concept of the Austrian practice AllesWirdGut has been named winner of the competition to design the new Vocational School for Administration in Vienna's Embelgasse. The winning concept is seeking to make the new school citizen-friendly and learning a part of public life again.

The only enclosure around the new school in Embelgasse is the perimeter of the block.

With its large glass surfaces, the ground floor affords an insight into everyday school life, opening the inside of the block to the street. The outward appearance of the new vocational training school is characterized by openness, transparency, and through views.

Through a generous two-level lobby, students have direct access to the classrooms that begin from the second floor upward. The lobby brings the airiness of the courtyard into the building.

Classrooms are kept transparent toward the circulation and communication areas – a continuum of interrelated learning, working, and communication spaces.

Complementing this is a number of varied outdoor spaces: a shady inner courtyard, a sunny roof terrace and a courtside terrace on the second floor so that students have an outdoor space close at hand at any time.

http://www.bustler.net/index.php/article/alleswirdgut_to_design_citizen-friendly_school_for_administration_in_vienna