New School For Psáry And Dolní Jirčany

The competition proposal addresses the premises of a new school, which will fulfill, in addition to standard school use, an important social role of the community center within the municipality. The building is designed with regard to its importance as a distinctive set of buildings, which suitably complements the environment of the current suburban community with the scale and selected typology of simple abstracted buildings with gabled roofs. Great emphasis is placed on the integration of community center functions into normal school operations so that these functions do not negatively affect each other. This is achieved by transforming the traditional dining room into a variable central space with many functions. The teaching part is based on the principle of partial functional units for 130 pupils. These create smaller, clear units within a large school, with which pupils can easily identify and accept them as their own.

The jury appreciated the simple contextual material and urban design with the appropriate use of archetypal elements in this proposal. Scale-friendly size of the school in the environment with a good connection to the historic center of the village. Clear and well-arranged layout of both levels, linked by common areas with the ambitions of the community center. Appropriate differentiation of teaching spaces for the first and second stage. The simple clean external expression of the school, interesting ideas in the interior and a pleasant solution of the external living spaces together create a precondition for the creation of a friendly environment for teaching and other leisure activities.

A personal tour of the place of the future school impressed us with the beauty of its rural character. We did not want to disturb this "genius loci" with anything but to support and humbly supplement the current development with the dominant feature of the local church. We are not designing a new separate complex, but we extend the historic village square and supplement the missing functions that the general public can use. We strive for a friendly parterre encouraging joint meetings and communication. We intentionally work with the archetype of the original country house, which respects tradition and atmosphere. We respect the mass scale of the nearby place.

The proposal's advantages are: scale adequacy to the village - the average height of the "pavilion" is given by the ground floor and attic, the school's internal environment with residential atriums and attic classrooms with increased height. The disadvantages of the design are the excessive schematicity and rigidity of the chosen compositional system of materials, the small width of the corridors, the chaos of the "labyrinth" of corridors. The problem is the small scatter spaces in front of the classes; the atriums will be closed most of the time in our climatic conditions.

The concept of "SCHOOL IN NEW ALLÉE" connecting the center of the village - i.e., the village square, the church with a brickyard / traditionally socio-economic symbol - the constant of Jirčany - the employer - the processor of the clay deposit. The school complex with a library, kindergarten, and sports ground is for us due to its size concerning the scale of the village; the archetype of a farmyard/analogy is the Jirčanský dvůr near the church. The importance of the school building for the municipality, its location, and scale must be connected with the existing structure of the seat. So also with the current street system. The new/connecting road must correspond in meaning to the meaning of the building - to have its own story following the context of the village (church, village center, school, brickyard, open landscape...). The grouping of buildings around the boarding "courtyard" allows easy orientation, straightforward operation, control, functional zoning, and the required construction phasing.

School as an archetype. The largest building in the village, with a regular grid of windows, a schoolyard, and a rustic look. The proposal in the first and second rounds was just a hair from the limits of populist kitsch, but at the same time, it aroused controversy. This contrast can be a good signal. The jury appreciated the courage to accept and design a school as large as is, give it meaning, an explicit expression, detail, and make the school an urban element. The proposal is, after careful examination, a series of timeless decisions. Inconspicuous use of the terrain configuration and different school heights from other areas, the obvious way of serving the school - resp. Its connection to the village by a path with an alley, an empty schoolyard, and confidence in the user that they own the space themselves, a central wing with a dining room and a corridor - as an informal social space overlooking the schoolyard. All these little things can make school by the alley a natural part of children's lives, their daily ritual. The school is the child's first meeting with the institution. There is no need to disguise this fact. It is possible to make it self-evident and dignified.

A school like a jigsaw puzzle. The raster of the puzzle creates order. And at the same time, a game. School as an analogy of vernacular village development. The small scale of the basic module corresponds to the village. Based on a solid curriculum, a school offers a varied offer of spaces for teaching and learning—school as a tool of education for ecological thinking. The whole building in a contemporary architectural concept is in principle economic and meets low energy requirements.

The design was selected for the second round for its good functional scheme, which provided the potential for further elaborating the project. Unfortunately, this potential was not used, and the design remained at the level of typological exercises. Compared to the first round, this is only a minimal shift, where corridors and common areas still form relatively confusing spaces. The design continues to resign from the urban relations with the village. It creates a complicated mass with numerous entrances and nooks, which does not resemble a school with its visuality. The design still lacks a large gym.

The first schools in our territory were monasteries. Information was collected in monasteries, and books were copied; they were the center of education. Today, however, this function has been taken over by schools. A plot of land on the edge of the village, but close to the original core, was designated for building a new school in Psáry and Dolní Jirčany. There are several limiting limits for the construction on the plot: protection zone of the gas pipeline and the planned construction of a road connecting to the Prague ring road, territorial limits (maximum two above-ground floors, land stopping from 25%, which is from 16,049 m2 to 4012 m2.) became a compact mass - a four-winged spatial arrangement with an inner courtyard. This originally only monastic scheme, taken over by medieval schools and universities (Karolinum, Collegium Jagelonicum in Kraków, Oxford, Bologna), we reworked and inserted a new, but not foreign, function into it. We perceive this spatial principle as a new symbol of education.

The design was chosen for the second round for its clear concept and sense of working with natural lighting. The "rawness" of the interior spaces was attributed to the first conceptual round, and the jury expected a more sensitive approach in the second round concerning future users of the building. Unfortunately, these expectations were not met, and the school retained its strict monastic character in the interior. A clear plus is a solution to the changing rooms and the way they are lit. The usability of the grassy schoolyard and the absence of highlighting the main entrance to the school is debatable. The proposed phasing also seems to be problematic.