Kari Järvinen and Merja Nieminen, Architects SAFA
Strömberg School Takomotie 11, Helsinki Invited competition 1996, completed 2000 Kari Järvinen and Merja Nieminen, Architects SAFA Design team: Jouko Piilola, Heikki Prokkola, Jaakko Haapanen Courtyard design: MA-arkkitehdit Oy/Marja Mikkola
Above: The glass partition between the two homerooms can be opened if desired. Photo Arno de la Chapelle. Opposite: Photo Arno de la Chapelle.
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The school lies in the Helsinki suburb of Pitäjänmäki, on a former industrial estate now filled with blocks of flats housing 3,000 residents. This former technical college designed in the 1960s by Risto-Veikko Luukkonen currently serves as a day-care centre and lower comprehensive school. The elongated low-rise building mass with horizontal strip windows offers a typical sample of 1960s school architecture, with classrooms on two floors aligned along the full length of a long corridor. When the school was modernised, the separate machine engineering workshop and classrooms were joined by a new atrium, or ‘living room’, where an inviting fire crackles in the open fireplace every morning. Finnish schools were formerly heated with iron stoves, but in the 1980s postmodernism made fireplaces part of the interior decoration. The formerly cramped central hallway has been opened up with glass partitions and generous skylights. The entire building now has a lighter, brighter colour scheme. Above the main atrium there is a winter garden and reading loft. The large windows throughout the building admit ample sunlight. There are also glass partitions between the small homerooms, which are grouped in pairs. Each homeroom is shared by two classes. Rather than having their own desks, each pupil has an assigned storage box for their school supplies. The school applies the pedagogical principles of Célestin Freinet, a proponent of learning by doing. The pupils accordingly spend half the day outside their homeroom. The former technical college houses numerous ‘shops’, as they are called, where age-integrated classes learn by doing, experiencing and experimenting. The school adheres to the official national curriculum, yet with an underlined hands-on approach. Each lesson lasts 90 minutes. There are two half-hour recesses during which the children play in the schoolyard or use the neighbouring sports field. The day-care centre is at the far end of the classroom wing and has its own fenced outdoor play area.