Stephen Taylor Architects

primary school . Uster

photos: Stephen Taylor Architects

An extension to a primary school in Uster 20km North East of Zurich, the site of this school is a reworking of the existing campus within the village centre.

Our project presents two compact building forms that sit loosely within their site boundary their freely placed disposition continues an urban texture of the towns piecemeal growth. Each new addition seeks out its most viable and best suited position in relation to the last. The large scale of many of these building, often of agricultural origin present an ‘easy’ and charming but no less dense townscape.

Together with the existing school building our proposals recalls the all encompassing adjacent vernacular forms, their sloping roof present a ‘big house’ like character to both classroom block and sports hall. Grouped together they enclose the external play space of the nursery classrooms located at ground floor.

The classroom building is conceived as the hub of the school complex with primary stair circulation placed central to all classroom spaces. This vertical circulation culminating with music room on top is one of four linked buildings connected by paths. They meander from the existing school buildings on the street, through to the refurbished barn to the East of the site. The existing barn is seen as providing the additional capacity required as part of phase three into which it is intended to relocate the workshops from the base of the sports building to make way for extra classrooms.