BG/BRG Sillgasse Innsbruck
Despite the particularly dense urban environment, the new school building creates an impressively generous and diverse range of spaces for the students, while at the same time creating added value for the public space around it.
The cramped situation along the narrow, heavily trafficked Sillgasse in Innsbruck’s city center was far from ideal for replacing the academic secondary school that had occupied the site since 1910. The new building is intelligently integrated into the challenging context: While continuing the historic block structure of the Gründerzeit fabric, its subtle shifts and angles respond sensitively to the urban setting, generating new spatial qualities. Two trapezoidal incisions divide the large volume into three connected segments, improving both the scale of the building and the lighting situation within.
Set back from the street, a small forecourt was created, with the main entrance sheltered beneath a wide canopy. The ground floor houses spaces used by all students regardless of grade level—lunchroom, after-school care, a large library, and the multipurpose hall. The upper four floors are accessed from the central foyer. The middle volume contains the specialized classrooms and administrative offices, while the lateral volumes each accommodate two clusters per floor. Within each cluster, five classes share a common open learning zone that connects directly to a covered outdoor terrace. These bright, airy outdoor spaces reveal one of the school’s most remarkable features: a vertically stacked schoolyard. With space tight at ground level, outdoor areas were distributed across all floors and now form generous balconies that link the three wings and provide layered visual connections between above and below. Each classroom opens to a small front area where students’ lockers are located, allowing students to quickly grab their jackets and step outside, even during short breaks.
To minimize the threshold between classrooms and the open learning zone, the architects not only used floor-to-ceiling glazing but also developed an innovative “disappearing door” detail (→ Photo essay). This functions as an acoustic buffer while allowing both separation and spatial continuity. The school reports that the learning zones are being well used.
To fit the required spatial program onto the limited site, each classroom was extended by a projecting bay window, with use determined individually. These protruding blocks give the building its distinctive street façade and create a highly differentiated range of spaces inside that is surprising given the compactness of the building. A variety of situations for learning and lounging, smaller and larger niches, stepped seating and diverse micro-spatial situations offer users real choice. The distinction between circulation and social areas is indicated by changes in flooring. Refined materials—oak and bright terrazzo—lend the interior a calm, natural atmosphere. This is a school designed for everyday use, where everyone can find their place. At Sillgasse, a committed school community contributed spatial ideas to the educational concept already at the competition stage and joined forces with an architecture practice experienced in school design and skilled at achieving big effects with small measures.
[ Sillgasse Federal Academic Secondary Schools, Innsbruck ] Architecture: SOLID architecture ZT GmbH. Client: BIG Bundesimmobiliengesellschaft m. b. H., on behalf of the Ministry of Education. Structural engineering: ingena ZT-GmbH. Landscape architecture: Kieran Fraser Landscape Design. Pedagogic consulting: Franz Hammerer. Procurement procedure: Open, single-stage design competition with implementation (above EU threshold). Planning and construction period: 2015–2021. Usable floor area: 9 550 m². Address: Sillgasse 10, 6020 Innsbruck, Tyrol.