Underused classroom is opened up towards the 

corridor and transformed into a lively leisure, learning and teaching place, using

25 letters of Slovene Alphabet as large scale room dividers.

Kranj Grammar School is listed as the oldest grammar school in Slovenia. The institution was founded in 1810, the building in which it is located, was built in 1897. The school got its first extension in 1903 and the second in 1979 when a new building annex was added with classrooms in the attic.

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Today, the school’s attic lacks rooms for socializing therefore pupils, except during school hours, rarely stay on this floor. In order to fix this, school’s management decided to use one of the existing classrooms that until now served as a storage space for old documents and transform it into new pupils’ living room that can be used during breaks or after school hours for various school activities.

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The idea, that the new living room should extend beyond the existing classroom into the adjunct corridor and visually connect with the existing library on the lower floor, has been present since the very beginning of scheme design. In this way, we added almost 40 m2 of usable surfaces for playing and socializing.

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The new leisure place is designed as an open Alphabet field, where big scale letters take over the functions of classical furniture elements. Soft and movable letters become cushions for sitting and assembling whereas hard and fixed letters take over the function of storage areas and space dividers that create smaller sub units for rest, socializing and sports. Here you can play billiards, chess or throw darts, you can read, sleep or watch a movie, do your homework, hang out with your friends, eat your snack, play mini basketball, listen to the music, observe the people in the library below, etc.

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Even though the fixed letters take over the function of space dividers, they also connect all three spatial units into a whole, as they simultaneously hide all the structural elements within them. In this way you do not see any other structural support in the living room, only large-scale Alphabet letters that with its uncommonness surprises and excites the pupils and creates a unique space for socializing, where for a brief moment, one can forget about daily school assignments.

 

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Location: Kranj, Slovenia

Project date: 2017
Completion date: 2018

Area: 103 m2

Type: educational

Client: Kranj Grammar School

 

Project team: Jure Hrovat, Ana Kreč, Žiga Rošer, Ana Križaj

Photographer: Matevž Paternoster

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