OUR VISION

A NEW LEASE OF LIFE

Kaluga International School is in need of a new building. The school is going
from strength to strength, the number of students is growing, it is an ambitious project which is of great importance to the development of the Kaluga region as a whole. At this important moment in the life of the School we have been proposed a project which will carry the reputation of the school forward, will provide it with a strong visual identity and an excellent educational environment.

The city government has given Kaluga International School a unique opportunity to turn a historic school building, in need of reconstruction, into an educational facility which will be contemporary and innovative, a place for inventiveness, exploration and international culture. We hope that through design excellence, this project will set an example for other educational institutions in Russia and offer an educational space of the future to its students, staff and the local community.

The project maximises the generous spaces of the existing building to create a playful and thoughtful educational environment worthy of future generations. The project also provides amenities for the wider community and encourages active use of the grounds outside of school hours.

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KEY CONCEPT: MINIATURE ARCHITECTURE

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The school building is characterised by generous rooms, wide corridors and high ceilings which are almost 4m high. In its found state, one can still find remnants of the post-Soviet era: characterful tiles, faded painted walls and fitted furniture. The scale of the building, especially in the eyes of children, permits us to imagine that we are in an abandoned castle in an unknown time and place. This feeling served as the basis for our design concept: to create miniature castles within each of the key spaces of the school, which transform study, play, reading into an adventure.

 

As we enter the large, tall spaces, we see a miniature architecture, which
mediates between the large room and the child’s experience. This is largescale furniture, each piece is tailor-made taking into account the particular use of the space it occupies. For example the library contains a special bookcase reminiscent of the study of St. Jerome from the canvas of Antonello da Messina, the kindergarten is a house perched on a chimney, the courtyard contains a ruined Barbican made out of wooden bricks. This miniature architecture turns each of the key spaces of the school into a castle with it’s own atmosphere and feel.

This approach means that we are using the existing generosity of the building with maximum efficiency and supplementing bespoke large-scale furniture with cheap, mass-produced items, which are transformed thanks to their ennobled surroundings.