SCHMUTTERTAL GRAMMAR SCHOOL
It all began on a small scale. The grammar school in Diedorf began life in 2010 as a branch of a school in the neighbouring town of Gersthofen. Initially it was housed in containers with a staff of only around 15 teachers. Twelve months later, the rural district gave the go-ahead for a new-build. As part of a research project by the German Federal Environmental Foundation, the intention was to create suitable space to offer state-of-the-art education for about 800 children and youngsters. During a work- shop in autumn 2011, teachers, parent representatives and pupils pooled their thoughts about their future school. They came up with some principle wishes, including having enough space for different teaching methods such as lecture-format and working in small groups, as well as stipulating some quite practical requirements, such as having enough shelf space for the satchels, given the frequent need to move the desks around during lessons to change the teaching methods. Chaired by Karin Dobener and her firm “LernLandSchaft”, the wishes were translated into functionalities and incorporated in a space program used by the architects as the basis for their design. At heart, the concept consists of learning environments, open areas where the classrooms in a year group are arranged around a “marketplace” measuring 100 m² in size. The teacher begins the lesson in the classroom with a short introduction, and then gives the pupils a task to solve unassisted in teams. They can move around freely in their learning environment and use various resources such as books and computers. Later on they all come together again to discuss their results with the teacher. The building has altogether seven of these “marketplaces”. How can such generous spacing be implemented in the framework of state school construction guidelines with their precise space allocations? By saving space elsewhere. For example, normally a school of 800 pupils will be granted three computer rooms measuring 70 m² each. But in this case, computer stations are integrated in the learning environments so that separate rooms are not needed. But the main thing is that the four classes in a year group share just three classrooms. After all, when the pupils are having sport, art, music, chemistry, biology or physics in a special room, one of the classrooms is usually empty. Making more efficient use of the space available gave the school the scope to implement its generous learning environments. The fact that the teachers were involved in devising this concept right from the start certainly made it easier for them to identify with their school. The same applies to the children and youngsters: while the building was under construction, the teachers and pupil representatives visited the wood construction company that produced the elements for the new building. This has apparently also helped the pupils to identify with the building: even three years after the grammar school opened, it is striking to see how few signs of wear-and-tear or vandalism there are. Headmaster Günter Manhardt puts it like this: “The pupils really appreciate what we’ve built for them here and they treat it carefully”.
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