OMA’s David Gianotten and Michael den Otter – as part of the Circlewood consortium – have developed the Innovation Partnership School Buildings project, a modular wood system to create schools that can be easily transformed throughout the schools’ lifecycles.
The system has been selected by the City of Amsterdam as one of the bases to realize nine to thirty “high-quality, flexible and sustainable” schools that contribute to the city’s goal to become fully circular by 2050.
© Arthur Wong, courtesy of OMA or Photography by Arthur Wong for OMA
OMA Managing Partner – Architect David Gianotten: “The prefabricated wood plug and play system has been developed through close collaboration between the Circlewood partners. With this system, the new schools that will be built in Amsterdam, and hopefully elsewhere in the Netherlands, can expand, downscale, or vary in configurations to respond to different needs over time. When a school closes, the building can be fully dismantled, and all the components become construction materials again.”
The system consists of standardized wooden columns and cross-laminated wooden floor panels, which are connected by recycled steel joints. All the components are precisely made in the factory under a digitally controlled process to ensure fast assembly and disassembly by an electric crane on site. These components are arranged into structural frameworks, leaving all the partition walls non-load-bearing to create spaces of different sizes and uses, including classrooms, auditorium and gardens. The partition walls are biobased and can be adapted to support activities such as indoor climbing and vertical farming.
© Studio A Kwadraat, courtesy of OMA
OMA Project Architect Michael den Otter: “The system components are durable, adaptable, and easily assembled. This offers flexibility for the schools to shape learning environments that suit their identities.”
OMA and Circlewood conceptualize the schools as pedagogical tools that raise students’ consciousness of human impact on the environment. Contrary to greenwashing, the schools’ carbon footprint and resources consumption are visualized on information screens. The buildings are also inherently circular designs with minimized emissions – owing to the prefabricated building method that reduces nitrogen emissions, the carbon-absorbing biobased walls, and the building components that can be fully reused.
© Studio A Kwadraat, courtesy of OMA
As Circlewood’s Creative Director, OMA will help with the selection of young architectural practices and landscape designers, and develop in collaboration with them new schools under the Innovation Partnership School Buildings program.
A pilot school in Amsterdam has been developed in collaboration with Studio A Kwadraat. Functioning as an integrated children’s centre, the compact building has a unique façade on each side, characterized by elements such as canopies and bike storage facilities that respond to the context and specific needs. The school has a spacious central hall for various children’s activities, and different types of façade openings that offer frameworks for the children to perceive the environment. The program, layout and appearance of the building can be refined and adapted over time.
© Studio A Kwadraat, courtesy of OMA
Jimmy van der Aa, Architect at Studio A Kwadraat: “The method is a kind of construction kit, with many technical requirements resolved upfront. This allows us as an architect to quickly set up a clear structure of the building, and we can fully focus on the final user and the client.”
The current system designed by OMA and the Circlewood partners will be further refined, with the potential to be applied outside of Amsterdam and the Netherlands.
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Image Cover: © Arthur Wong, courtesy of OMA or Photography by Arthur Wong for OMA
Courtesy of © OMA
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