HF & VUC Fyn Odense, Denmark
While the adult education centre features a robust exterior, the interior contrasts with it, offering a rounded, spatially diverse learning environment to meet the individual learning styles of its users. Acompelling atrium emerges from a system of soft, oval forms stacked and rotated relative to one another. The variation between high and low, light and dim, open and intimate spaces supports a wide range of teaching situations and social activities for the 1,300 adult students.
Located next to the central station, the HF & VUC Fyn adult education centre marks the realisation of a new city campus that connects the inner city and the harbour. By combining elements from its coarse industrial neighbours with a transparent interior organisation,it bridges the harbour'sscale and the human scale.
A school that doesn’t feel like one
An adult education centre offers school programs to people who have often grappled with the school system in their younger years and now want to try once again to get an education. Because many of the centre’s students associate school with struggle and defeat, our main goal for the project was to design a school that doesn’t look and feel like one.
The building is characterised by a system of curved lines and rounded forms, which cut through the rational volume’s regular form and create a multifaceted spatial setting that takes into account the school’s different functions: an arena for teaching and learning, a workplace and a social meeting place for a diverse group of users.
Central atrium as a gathering place
The building is organised around a transparent and very active atrium space, called the Agora and named after the public gathering place in ancient Greek cities that constituted the centre of political, spiritual and artistic life in the city-state. This central space not only serves as a forum for social activities but also as an essential learning environment thatinterplays with the classrooms and the school’s additional functions. The rounded shapes form a series of balconies and platforms with shifting overlaps across the atrium to create single, double and triple height spaces with varying degrees of daylight, transparency and intimacy.
The levels of activity decrease gradually from the Agora and outwards, with the calmest and most private spaces located along the building’s outer edges. At the same time, this organisational principle is carried over from plan to section, with the highest levels of activity and transparency at ground level and spaces for contemplation on the top floor. The functions on the different floors are organised so that the relationships between classrooms and special rooms enable cross-disciplinary and project-oriented lesson plans. Students can thus turn to those spaces and environments which match their individual learning style.
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