Smart School Irkutsk, Russia
The Smart School aims to unite architecture and landscape into a unique, diverse and inclusive learning environment and gathering point for the local community. The campus is organised as a permeable ring of buildings, each expanding towards the centre with a directly related outdoor area. Together, the areas form a diverse experiential learning landscape that supports pedagogical cross-pollination. By combining active and social spaces with natural and agricultural landscapes outside the ring, the landscape becomes part of teaching activities, and the school is partly self-sufficient.
The Smart School campus has room for 1,040 students aged 3 to 18 and over 400 staff members. The complex is designed for pre-school, junior school and high school, doubling as publicly accessible cultural, sports and health centres. With a focus on diversity and inclusion, at least 15% of the student body is reserved for orphans and children with limited physical capabilities. Therefore, part of the site includes a special settlement for orphaned children and their foster families.
The buildings are connected by a large roof surface with distinctive eaves, which gives the complex a recognisable identity and creates a series of roofed outdoor areas. These zones dissolve the boundary between the indoor and outdoor spaces by creating a diverse transitional zone for learning and physical activities, play, social interaction and relaxation.
A distinctive zigzag roof, inscribed within a circle, brings the individual buildings together into a coherent educational complex, while ridges and large eaves of varying heights and sizes accentuate the functions beneath them. The ring is frayed at the edges, and this, combined with the offset building volumes, creates a diverse range of spaces under the unifying roof. These common spaces relate to the adjacent interior functions and the adjoining landscape. They visually and functionally communicate the theme of a specific area of the complex, serve as wayfinding elements, promote synergies between adjacent functions, and provide access points to both centre of the circular complex and the individual buildings.
Selected references
ArchDaily
Architizer
