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INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL






Reconstruction and extension project
Riga, Ķīpsala, Zvejnieku Street 12
Architects: Zaiga Gaile, Liene Griezīte, Andra Šmite, Ingmārs Atavs
Client: SIA „Ziemeļzunds”
Area of the existing building 548 m2
Area of the designed extension 1755 m2
The first stage of the school project was developed and put into operation in September 2001. As part of it, the two-story residential building with a plastered wooden frame structure built in the 1930s was adapted to the requirements of the International Preschool. The school's first-stage program for 7 classrooms with auxiliary rooms perfectly fit into the planning structure of the former residential building.
Within two years, the International Primary School successfully developed and the school premises became too narrow. The new program required expanding the age range of children from the initial preschool institution to a primary school with an increased number of classrooms by 6 classrooms. The program also included a dining room, a library, painting, language and computer studios, a gym with changing rooms.
The total area of the old school part fully meets the needs of the kindergarten, and it was intended to be preserved in this way in the project. The two new school volumes are placed in the free part of the plot at the back of the old house and are oriented along the longitudinal connecting axis. The two-story building body of the school classrooms and studios with a semi-basement floor is placed along the longitudinal axis, behind it is the third - the gym volume. A composition of a calm linear silhouette of three buildings is formed. The individual parts of the school are connected by single-story glazed corridors. The volume of the old house is equal to the volume of the gym, and they are the final ends of the composition. The middle central body of the school part has a central hall on three floors, in which a staircase is placed. Classrooms are placed on both sides of them with open glazed walls facing the garden space to the north and south. The three-story atrium of the school has a skylight in the roof corbel.
The new extension of the school is defined as an addition to modern functional wooden architecture, which nevertheless clearly respects and repeats the silhouette of the old original building. The volume of the extension attempts to operate with traditional materials - wood and glass - in the sense of today's thinking, and this is related to the existing volume and situation. The volumes of the school are crowned by calm flat gable roofs, the arrangement of glazed planes on the facades also in a way repeats the rhythm of the window and wall planes of the original building, the division, which was the key for the authors in their search for new volumes.
Total area 535.6m²
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