Architecture
Ørestad Gymnasium - 3XN
With their design of Ørestad Gymnasium to mark the gradual reform of spaces in the educational realm of today, Denmark-based architectural firm 3XN’s resource creativity, communication and experimentation to makes things change and break the notion of a frozen conflict of learning spaces.
Education by design has been found stuck in an instrumental mode, orienting towards past and present modes through service of materials and textures in the outer shell. The education movement has continually evolved through decades of design- it frames a history where institutions have been observed through purpose and objectives not of education through design but through teaching. The rampant decade of education design profiles projects like Ørestad Gymnasium (Ørestad College) which occasioned a pioneering step as the first college in Denmark to assimilate content, subject matter, organisation and learning systems into directional benchmarks in the design strategy of the Danish school for students between the age of 16-19.
The test of the design movement’s progress in our everyday lifestyle can be measured here by the degree at which education has been transformed to commercially and culturally function in an expanded design domain. The exterior expression of Ørestad Gymnasium, on a footprint of 12,000sqm, casts a premeditated impression to one’s expectation of a stylised built mass with strong lines of colour playing with the environment for effect. The showcase of the subtle volume is broken by louvered interfaces which film the interiors faintly in transparent coloured light. The idea reverses beyond enclosed spaces and assembles as openness and flexibility stitched into the built fabric. It’s a holistic design agenda encompassing the social factor as paramount with individual classrooms and IT interpreted as an element. Individuals, groups, classes and assemblies are unexpectedly deviant and bold in the sense of light and airy freedom. Expressed as an understated aspect, communication, interaction and synergy are the key issues that drive the design. The connection of the building functions are positioned to the point of relevance—with an overall interconnection playing vertically and horizontally both. The scale skims over the boxy surface inside with any emptiness with only four boomerang shaped floor plans. It is not a scarcity of conceptual thinking but a powerful design perspective with rotated boomerang shaped plans at play. Curvilinear, fluid and adaptive, the circulation intertwines four study zones on each floor. The spatial take provokes a fresh approach of reshaping and effecting change. The organisational flexibility brings about a cultural energy that one cannot find in level changes; a thought that was explored by the designers to seek out the tangent interface between different teaching and learning spaces with no distinct borders. A vertical central atrium spirals out with a broad staircase greeting a part of each floor opened by the rotation all the way upto the terrace. The spread of fragments engage and compose this congenial community space. Thinking, practice and education in a different dialogue with design define a new role of the institution; if the space has instructional implications, the educator’s activity is merely token. Herein, the freedom of expressions escalates in form of flexible furnishings. Notions of ornamentation merely lie in muted finishes and patterns of light or shade with a trace of colour splashed in it. It is about a statement of clarity- all visible, legible and obvious. The psychological grid of design, which was awarded a prize in an invited competition in 2003, nurtures a sort of cultural development primarily before any structural idea takes shape. The built experience of an institute is perceived as a selection of ideas and reflections that informs one’s thinking. The learning is prospective yet progressive.
The scale, proportions and idealisations of all institutional buildings have different energies but they stem from the same creative root – of designing an environment for learning. What differs here is how the brief of the project is rewritten by the architect. It is the opportunity of differential aesthetics that makes this distinction. Through space, experience and extension of the notion of an institution, Ørestad Gymnasium ends up evolving full of surprises—a complex microcosm of simple ideals.
Project: | Ørestad College |
|---|---|
Location: | Copenhagen, Denmark |
Architect: | 3XN |
Engineer: | Søren Jensen A/S |
Adviser: | Helle Mathiasen, cand. pæd. ph.d. |
Acoustics: | Frederik Wiuff |
Client: | Copenhagen Municipality and The Danish State |
Completion of the Project: | 2007 |
Project Estimate: | DKK 200 mio. / € 27 mio |
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