Group photo for tutors and students of the workshop
Adoul Jibrel is an architecture student at Frankfurt university of Applied sciences. She with 8 of her colleagues had participated in the International Docomomo Student Workshop 2018 – Documentation and Conservation of Buildings, Sites and Neighborhoods of the Modern Movement- that had been held in Ljubljana Slovenia last month. The workshop had accommodated 40 students from many universities around the world.
The main theme of the workshop was “Education for everyone/ Structure in Ljubljana”. It talked about the architect Emil Navinšek work. He developed new school typology that called it free corridor. Students analyzed and where asked to work on Tone Čufar and/or the Majda Vrhovnik Primary Schools.
Majda Vrhovnik primary school
The schools were built in the 50’s and 60’s of the last century. They were an innovative solution at that time. However, teaching methods keeps on changing, and new teaching methodologies rises, as a result architecture should adapt to all too. In Docomomo workshop the students were asked to either change the function of the building as an adaptive use or keep the function but make the spaces of the school functional.
Teaching methods before and now
We were distributed into 8 working groups. I was in group number 7, the group and I worked on Majda Vrhovnik primary school; it is in the center of Ljubljana, surrounded with governmental buildings, commercial buildings and residential ones.
Analyzing the surrounding context
After going back and forth in the analysis between the building, the functions and the urban surroundings, the school function stays as it is was our decision. From the plans of the school, and researching about corridor free schools, Emil Navinšek’s aim is to make a space in the center of the school that could be used and adapted for twelve different things, -that he mentioned them in his book (the revolutionary new corridor-free systems in architecture) in 1996-.
Nowadays, the center of the schools as we called it the heart, is a waste of huge space that is not used in a proper way. That’s when we decided to recover the heart of Navinsek. To re-design in a fashion that it beat life again with spatial function.
Recovering the heart of Nevinsek
Our design solution that we came up to is to take the library as a spatial function and exploded it on the three levels of the school where 8 by 12 corridor exist. Reading nodes was clustered in the space, bookshelves were merged in the architectureof the heart of the school as well as the classrooms were categorized in two groups fixed classrooms as labs and regular classroom. The design of the fixed classrooms was designed in a transparent way that could create a visual connection between the heart and the classrooms. The idea came from our concept of teaching by viewing and teaching by example.
The regular classes merge with the heart of the school allows the students to feel free in the education process, through their day. Letting the students to be the center of the education process.
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- Design solution 1
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- Design solution 2
I participated in the workshop without expectations, but after the 3 days intense workshop, I felt that I learned a lot in a short time on conservation and reservation buildings. They could be from the modern movement like Majda Vrhovnik primary school. From thinking of the past of the building, why does it exist and how to protect it. Through the workshop, I also got the opportunity to know many knowledgeable people, and great architects. They were amazing fast 4 days of hard work that I enjoyed so much!!
Adoul Jibrel
Master student at the Frankfurt University of Applied Science
ajibrel@gmail.com
