Location: Líbeznice Village, Czech Republic
Client: Municipality of Líbeznice

1st prize in the architectural competition
Nomination for the Mies van der Rohe Award 2017

An elementary school for 240 pupils in 8 classrooms, which also serve as the premises for afterschool activities. The school's cafeteria flexible layout allows an easy rearrangement, creating space for performances of the Elementary Art school, or lectures with film screening. All of this on 1000m2 of usable area. The premises of the elementary school spreads on 3ha in the NE part of the Líbeznice municipality. The main building of the school, built in 1956, stood in solitude in the landscape, until it was reached by the houses growing from the village’s core. Today, the school garden is surrounded by a residential area from the south, while it flows into open landscape to the north and to the east. During the years, the main school building was complemented by a park, children’s traffic playground, sports ground, and an individual building housing the school’s afterschool club.

The building’s layout is designed as an annular shape with an eccentric round atrium, which is surrounded by a multifunctional foyer, integrating functions of a corridor, children’s lockers and a common area. The foyer allows access to all of the classrooms, sanitary facilities, teacher’s lounge, and the cafeteria. The area of the cafeteria/aula is, thanks to its functional flexibility, the most important space in the interior layout. It is here that the school events accumulate and the activities flow seamlessly into the foyer. The main source of light in the classrooms is skylights, which offer uniform light conditions for all the pupils. Windows in the façade are a supplementary source of daylight and offer a subtle contact with the garden. The desks are primarily oriented to the centre of the building as well as the interactive whiteboards. However, the layout of the desks is not fixed and they may be re-arranged according to the teacher’s needs.

Competition: 10/2011
Project: 07/2014
Construction completed: 08/2015
Opened: 31.8.2015
Built-up area: 1 126 m2
Volume: 4 504 m3
Floor area: 1 026 m2
Usable area of the outdoor atrium: 171 m2
Surrounding paved area: 789 m2

Authors: Adam Halíř, Ondřej Hofmeister, Petr Lešek
In cooperation with: Adam Hašpica, Bohdana Linhartová, Marek Sankot

Statics: RECOC
Environment engineering equipment: TechOrg
HVAC: Petr Kvasnička
Electrical installation: MINET ELEKTRO
Graphic design: Kultivar, Very Popular Office
Visual style, wayfinding system: Kultivar, Very Popular Office
Photos: Andrea Thiel Lhotáková