Haller Gut Architekten have done a great job with the school building in Aarberg, Switzerland. In line with their focus, the project exemplifies their many years of experience in educational construction as well as reduced, sustainable building practices. Find out herewhy details and simplicity are not mutually exclusive and why less is often more.
Haller Gut Architekten have done a great job with the school building in Aarberg, Switzerland. In line with their focus, the project exemplifies their many years of experience in educational construction as well as reduced, sustainable building practices. Find out herewhy details and simplicity are not mutually exclusive and why less is often more.
1976 was not only the year in which the legendary Apple I computer was introduced by Steve Jobs and Jimmy Carter was elected US President. It was also the year Haller Gut Architekten was founded in Bern. The firm, led by Roger and Christian Gut and Marc Haller, has realized and renovated numerous educational buildings over the decades. Neither technology nor politics play a major role here. Instead, the magic word of the Swiss architecture firm is reduction.
Certain aspects of the style from back then have hardly changed. And that is a positive judgment. For example, the striking window shading in the Cottens school building in 1988 can still be found in the current Aarberg (2019-2022), a full 34 years later. After all, it is important to preserve the tried and tested. And tried-and-tested features can be found at every turn in the Aarberg school building. The architects have expressed their design language in many loving details, quiet and modest, yet always functional.
The building has its main façades along the longitudinal axis, facing the Alte Aare river to the west and the elementary school playground to the east. The flat pitched roof also extends beyond the cubature on these sides, so that outdoors it serves as weather protection not only for the façade, but also for moving around. In addition, there are sun protection sails that can be lowered in front of the windows and folded away from them. They give the façade plasticity and automatically ensure a varied, playful appearance. According to Haller Gut Architekten, they also represent a symbolic connection between the interior and exterior spaces.
With the wooden façade, a conscious decision was made for a natural appearance, which is intended to be a reference to the green space and the river landscape. And indeed, despite the large glass surfaces, the long sides of the school building have a certain naturalness. The group rooms at ground level can be accessed from the outside, which further emphasizes the immediacy of the learning and natural spaces.
Behind them are modern educational spaces that reflect a contemporary school philosophy. Open learning landscapes, supplemented by sanitary facilities on the first floor, offer a tabula rasa for any situation. The room program called for group rooms for the kindergarten and the day school. These rooms are also connected to each other with doors, so that cross-group activities are also possible in terms of space.
There are a further five classrooms on the upper floor, which are connected by a corridor. This development creates a usable intermediate space that invites quiet reading and working through niches and views into the classes. The slight difference in level between the east and west sides is overcome within the building via a half-floor in the lower storey. This makes the access area appear open, as the split level enables a visual connection through the school building, from the street to the outdoor area by the river.
The stair entrances and exits are not marked with tactile or neon-colored stripes, as is usually the case, but with STEIN set into the concrete. Another distinguishing feature of Haller Gut Architekten, who have integrated this stylistic device in many other projects. However, the dominant wood in the façade is not just for show, but actually corresponds to the supporting structure. This makes the building appear more delicate and smaller than its existing sibling. The interior walls are clad in varnished wood and the roof beams are exposed on the upper floor, giving the building structure a spatial appearance. On the first floor, the ceiling beams visually stretch the group rooms, which are set through the building.
The design language has been deliberately emancipated from the main building on the other side of Hans-Müller-Weg, so that the school building by Haller Gut Architekten can be read as an independent structure. And that is a good thing, as it is ultimately a showcase project for a new building in several respects. One reason for this is that the building has a strong impact in its technical and structural reduction. This takes into account the conservation of resources without degrading it to a sustainability vehicle.
On the other hand, it is due to the atmosphere that it creates with the simplest of means. Taking something away, be it spatially, programmatically or functionally, is a difficult task and the freestyle in our present day, in which too often more still seems to be more. By exercising restraint, the architects have done themselves a favor, and thus also the users of the school building in Aarberg. With the new building, they have been given a playground that can also support the coming decades of educational development.
But schools can also be different! A quasi-materialistic antithesis to Haller Gut Architekten’s timber construction can be found in Zarren, Belgium: here, FELT Architekten have given steel and colored concrete the leading role in a school building.
