GYMNASIUM 46º09'N/16º50E Croatia : Architecture

GYMNASIUM 46º09'N/16º50E, 2003-2007 Lea Pelivan + Toma Plejic / STUDIO UP 'Koprivnica - Spirit of Mega'; a town with the lowest number of college graduates in Croatia announced the rebellious competition program for 900 scolars and 2000 spectators in 2003. The site of the high school building and a sports hall, in front of the Americanlike housing suburb periphery, is located at the end of a series of ambitious town interventions - mega elements. 'Tabula rasa'; The contact site of these 'two worlds' is radically divided into two parts, black and green, full and empty, spiritual and physical, one facing the city and the other facing the residential suburbia. The new building complex arises between these two extremes. An enigmatic compressed mono-volume of the gymnasium and sports hall complex with intricate spatial relations in contrast to a vast plain landscape, placed centrally on the plot, forms a gymnasium - a common place - a contrasting provocative whole lacking a foreground or background, without hierarchy or authority. The "common place" concept examines the stability of the hybrid, and enables the most diverse interpretations both in terms of use and interpretation of significance of the building. The structure of the building is reinforced concrete on the ground floor, while the upper floors are realized with dry assembled 'H' shaped steel elements. The classrooms floors have thin Slimdeck flooring, made up of trapezoid section lightweight galvanized sheet steel and cast concrete. The roof of the sports hall is made using a specially designed grid work of right-angled elements and joints in steel. Generally, all the materials are available on the standard building market (lightning, anodised aluminium window frames, metal parapet grilles, Profilit industrial opal glass) and there is no finishing when unnecessary, as in case of the floor soffits which are left unfinished. Because of its high cost there is no air conditioning in the gym, so system of shutters above the sports hall and the ducts through the cantilevered classrooms of the top floor ensure a constant floow of cool air during the summer months, while the double polycharbonate skin creates a 'green house effect' in winter. The translucent skin, illuminated at night, radiates the even and turns the building into public condensor, an iconic and symbolic place for the yuongsters of Koprivnica.