School centre in Slovenj Gradec

Classrooms are used for lessons and common areas for student youth activities. The classrooms are detailed down to the last square metre, and the common spaces are what distinguish one school from another, architecture from architecture. The schools of Emil Navinšek and Oton Gaspari are famous and undoubtedly recognisable for this. Those of us who had the privilege of visiting them every day in our early youth will never forget that.

The new Secondary School Centre in Slovenj Gradec is therefore designed with a great deal of self-criticism and reflection around a central atrium space that opens out over all four floors. The design is compact, bright, airy and integral. All common areas are transparent and naturally lit. The two school programmes and the specialised classrooms are separated into their own tracts, but the school still functions in an integrated and interconnected way.

A school is not a high-tech machine that requires intelligent control, measuring all weather parameters and atmospheric movements, but an institution that needs to make pupils aware of the need to use natural and own resources sustainably in a simple and understandable way. It can do the most by example. Sustainability aspects were therefore selected from a range of possible options on the basis of the “low tech” principle, which primarily involves rational architectural design and care and common sense in its use.

The project was prepared for a public competition, but the competition jury did not propose it for the award, despite its undisputed quality, from the point of view of the rationality of the construction.

Authors: BLENKUŠ Matej; CIMPERMAN Katja; FLORIJANČIČ Miloš; PIKELJ Andreja; CVETREŽNIK Anja; BABNIK ROMANIUK Blaž