The municipality of Saanen will have to renovate the Rütti school complex in Gstaad over the next few years and adapt it to the requirements of current school operations. In addition to the rooms for the primary school, multiple specific rooms and the day school, the municipality will have to provide classrooms for an additional class (primary school) in the foreseeable future due to new forms of learning and teaching. The current gym room also no longer meets the requirements.
The design idea is, on the one hand, to continue the traditional townscape both in its urban granularity as well as in materiality and architectural design language and on the other hand to create a modern school building that can optimally meet all current and future demands.
The surrounding area, which is characterized by solitary volumes, is supplemented with the extension volume, which is another free-standing building. A plinth, embedded in the site and practically non-appearing in terms of urban planning, connects the old building and the new school building to form a functional, compact unit.
In the plinth building, at the intersection between the old and the new building, the new main entrance with the pause hall is placed as a central distribution point. From here, the various group rooms are easily accessible. The new multi-purpose hall is directly next to the central break hall, which is pushed into the slope to the east. From an elevated position in the pause hall, people can look down into the multi-purpose hall. This opens a new perspective on what is happening, especially during events. The room is accessible by an open staircase.
The entire new building is based on a modular grid system for standard square classrooms with a side length of 8.10 m. The building, designed as a timber frame construction, can therefore be flexibly occupied and adapted to future when user requirements change.
The new building uses the design language and materialization of the surrounding chalet buildings and alpine landscape and reinterprets them in terms of its specific use as a school. The building is structured spatially by horizontal overlays of the outer larch wood cladding.
The design of the base differentiates from that of the schoolhouse with exposed concrete elements. Domestic types of wood are used in the interior, both structurally and in terms of design, which takes the aspect of sustainability into account and contributes significantly to a comfortable learning atmosphere that supports pedagogy.
The municipality of Saanen will have to renovate the Rütti school complex in Gstaad over the next few years and adapt it to the requirements of current school operations. In addition to the rooms for the primary school, multiple specific rooms and the day school, the municipality will have to provide classrooms for an additional class (primary school) in the foreseeable future due to new forms of learning and teaching. The current gym room also no longer meets the requirements.
The design idea is, on the one hand, to continue the traditional townscape both in its urban granularity as well as in materiality and architectural design language and on the other hand to create a modern school building that can optimally meet all current and future demands.
The surrounding area, which is characterized by solitary volumes, is supplemented with the extension volume, which is another free-standing building. A plinth, embedded in the site and practically non-appearing in terms of urban planning, connects the old building and the new school building to form a functional, compact unit.
In the plinth building, at the intersection between the old and the new building, the new main entrance with the pause hall is placed as a central distribution point. From here, the various group rooms are easily accessible. The new multi-purpose hall is directly next to the central break hall, which is pushed into the slope to the east. From an elevated position in the pause hall, people can look down into the multi-purpose hall. This opens a new perspective on what is happening, especially during events. The room is accessible by an open staircase.
The entire new building is based on a modular grid system for standard square classrooms with a side length of 8.10 m. The building, designed as a timber frame construction, can therefore be flexibly occupied and adapted to future when user requirements change.
The new building uses the design language and materialization of the surrounding chalet buildings and alpine landscape and reinterprets them in terms of its specific use as a school. The building is structured spatially by horizontal overlays of the outer larch wood cladding.
The design of the base differentiates from that of the schoolhouse with exposed concrete elements. Domestic types of wood are used in the interior, both structurally and in terms of design, which takes the aspect of sustainability into account and contributes significantly to a comfortable learning atmosphere that supports pedagogy.