Various Architects AS

Various Architects have delivered on our second invited school competition in Norway together with Kant Arkitekter and Grindaker Landksap. Nye Nørvasund School is a new 1-7 grade school with 3 parallel classes in an area outside of Ålesund. Our submission was an energy efficient and space effective building that integrated the school’s complex functional needs onto a site with beautiful views to the south.

Our project (motto:”Skolelys”) was designed to express a sense of community. The three main functions of the school are each given clearly defined areas bound together within a legible linear form. The 1st to 4th grade classes are placed to one side, 5th to 7th grades on the other, and the BASE (students with special needs) placed between the two to provide a truly integrated school. The school’s diagrammatically linear layout is bent in the middle to create a clear division between the parts and to create a main entrance. The school’s sports and recreation multi-hall is placed centrally opposite the bend, along with administration, an open cantina, library, music room, and a 90 seat auditorium over two floors.

The compact plan of the school makes for short internal connections and good daylighting. Individual entrances for each grade connect to changing rooms and lockers in the first floor that open onto central communication spaces where special instructional areas such as art and science are placed. The second floor contains open plan teaching areas. Each year’s area is defined spatially by the extruded boxes on the facades and roof. The extension of these areas also allows for good daylighting deep into the space, and light from multiple sides. There are no hallways in the building as such, with all of the areas having multiple functions. This way all of the available area can be used as part of the educational environment, either for groups or individual workspaces. This allows the school to achieve a very efficient brutto/netto factor of 1.3.

The competition was won by the project “Parallell” by Selbergs Arkitektkontor AS, Trondheim.