The playgrounds in Zurich's residential neighbourhoods are as popular as they are scarce. But when the public sector needed space in the past, this scarce public space was cut back further. The example of Siriuswiese shows how the Chaussee at the edge of the park was misappropriated as a storage area for road construction, how a temporary kindergarten was placed in the open space and how a tennis court was fenced off. Against this background, it was soon decided that the new school building should not stand on the meadow, but next to it. This is the only way to experience the integral depth of the open space between Gladbachstrasse and Hofstrasse. For this reason, the new school building is pushed into the neighbouring, fragmentary building quarter. This makes it possible to orientate the quiet sides of the school grounds towards the residential gardens and the noisier sides towards the meadow.
Kindergarten, school, music school, sports hall, tennis club, work yard: six independent institutions come together on a small area. There is no room for them next to each other – which is why they are all grouped together in one building. This leaves the most space free for breaks, games and socialising. The school of yesterday was a building with homogeneous, large rooms and a homogeneously collective quality. The new tasks brought about by the change to a day school system and new teaching concepts require the provision of rooms that are programmed much more collectively on the one hand, and rooms in which the intimacy of a residential situation is sought on the other – the cluster shared by three school classes whose members feel at home in the manageable group. For this to succeed, the clusters must be free of transit traffic, similar to flats at a staircase. And the central learning landscapes – to stay with the image of the flat – should not be dimly lit interior worlds surrounded by classrooms, but should instead have views, light and air like living rooms.
