Today, the Bottmingen school complex appears as a collage of individual buildings from different decades without any binding cohesion. With the project “Thousand Plateaus” these fragments are located in a common landscape context and thus strengthened. The existing buildings – the school building from 1907, the extension buildings from the 1950s/60s and the kindergarden from 2014 – form an ensemble with the new buildings, in a natural coexistence of old and new. The expression of the buildings also respects the existing buildings and strives for a diverse but harmonious overall appearance. Layers of time and individual buildings remain legible as such, but are integrated into a holistic interpretation of the site: a school complex as a diverse landscape on “thousand” plateaus. The new buildings are organized on a small site in order not to “block” further developments in the future and at the same time to take into account the great importance of generous open spaces for a school site. With the smallest possible intervention, an effect is to be achieved on several levels: By building directly onto the existing elementary school from the 1950s and continuing its structural order, functional synergies can be exploited in a compact building volume and short distances created. The extension will provide barrier-free access to the existing school complex and, next to additional school space, will also provide a new collective center.
