School in Paspels, Switzerland


Photos © Archive Olgiati

The village of Paspels is a scatter settlement with solitary buildings, strewn loosely in the landscape and rarely positioned directly by the roadside. The new schoolhouse fits in with this type of settlement.

With a square ground plan, the building consists basically of two concrete parts: an internal structure and an outer shell which, for climatic reasons, only touch where they are joined by so-called shear connectors. The two parts support each other.
The classrooms, clad in larch wood, are situated in the corners of the square, each opening out towards a different direction of the compass. In order that all the rooms have their own view, the second floor has been rotated by 90 degrees.

The principle of this project relies on the distortion of the originally orthogonal groundplan. All the existing irregularities are the computer-generated outcome of this unique architectural gesture.

The distorted angles within the schoolhouse never deviate from a right angle by more than 5 degrees, in order to avoid undue drama. In phenomenological terms, there are two main effects. Firstly the basically static system of rooms is set almost imperceptibly in motion, and appears more ‘spatial’, while from outside the body of the building seems more ‘bodily.’

By this means, a building is created which is not simply an accumulation of forms, but presents, instead, a new indivisible whole. This in turn owes its existence less to an unfathomable emotionality than to an unfathomable rationality in terms of the reality of the building.

[Text: Valerio Olgiati]




Photographs © Archive Olgiati

Paspels school - information from Valerio Olgiati 1 Nov 2007

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Paspels school Switzerland architect : Valerio Olgiati

copyright pictures : archiv olgiati

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Paspels school: page - adrian welch / isabelle lomholt