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Playtime Schulhaus Utogrund — Zurich, Switzerland

Schools are not only organisations, but also social structures. The way they are designed and programmed shapes the interactions that develop within and around the school. This proposal does not understand the school as a purely institutional learning tool, nor as a strictly programmed composition, but as a public condenser for the neighbourhood. The aim is therefore to create a public interior for the city – a playground for the community and a home for the children of the surrounding area.

The Utogrund school and sports facility are located on a prominent corner at the historical curve of Albisriederstrasse, the axis connecting the neighbourhood to the heart of Zurich. At the scale of the plot, Utogrund is a play space, a mix of public programs. The sports facility, the school and the community uses often overlap without generating real synergy or dialogue at the larger scale of the city and neighbourhood. The compact school volume sits on top of the sports hall structure and faces the open field. Above ground, the building is divided into three legible parts: the base, the body and the crown.

The concrete base accommodates the public spaces of the building. The library, multipurpose hall and cafeteria form a sequence of independent spaces that can be opened into a single large hall in dialogue with Dennlerstrasse. The timber structure of the body hosts the music school on the first floor, followed by the classroom clusters above. The cross-laminated timber arches of the crown wrap a naturally lit space reserved for work and therapy rooms. Circulation is never only circulation; it always extends the spatial potential of adjacent functions.

The vertical foyer is the backbone of the building – a volume that stages the building’s functions towards the street in a theatrical way. It is the face of the school as an urban figure, as a public interior for the neighbourhood. The volume acts both as an acoustic buffer for the classrooms and as a covered playground for the clusters, landing on the ground floor as the festive entrance of the building.