Catholic High School Extension

Paderborn, Germany

 

The space available at the Catholic University of Applied Sciences for its more than 1,000 students will be expanded with the addition of an urgently needed lecture hall and additional seminar rooms. In the historic surroundings of the existing building and its park, the single-story new building fits carefully into the southern courtyard and rises above the surrounding ground level on its cantilevered base. Materials and structures are oriented to the central design goal of a light and floating appearance as a contrast to the massive walls and portals of the existing building.
The new building is accessible barrier-free from the park and the existing building. Subordinate uses are located in discreetly colored wooden boxes to the right and left of the entrance. In the lecture rooms, the material wood dominates in the parquet floors and the acoustic cladding of the ceilings. Mobile partition walls and flexibly usable sound and video systems meet the requirements of teaching.
All rising structural elements, facades and roof are made of the renewable raw material wood. The supporting structure of untreated larch wood columns and larch wood trusses remains visible on the long sides of the new building. The roof edges and gable walls are clad with a metal skin of untreated copper. Both longitudinal facades provide light to the teaching rooms via floor-to-ceiling glass fronts, protected on the south side by the cantilevered roof here and wooden slats stretched between the supports. The roof as the fifth facade in the vicinity of the surrounding seminar rooms and offices of the existing building is covered with greenery and kept free of technical installations.