Inner city oasis Even outside regular school hours there is plenty going on in the small walled schoolyard, part of which is paved in a charming pattern and part covered with broom-finish concrete. Finely equipped by Kieran Fraeser Landscape Design with a seating landscape made of ash, this little inner-city oasis even has a few small trees. A good place to play table tennis, chat, read or just hang out after classes: either down at ground level or on the wide balconies with their tall black metal railings that flank the courtyard on all four upper floors in the building's middle section. They are connected vertically by (escape) staircases which turn these horizontally bent, semi-open outdoor areas into something resembling a vertical courtyard. It is permeable to the interior through doors and continuous ribbon windows, whereas the windows in the two external parts of the building are like square boxes that seem to have been pushed through the facades. Block perimeter development Almost 100 offices took part in the single-stage competition, which was open throughout the EU in 2015 and was won by SOLID architecture. Their project envisages a completely newly built school, although the competition would have allowed them preserve part of the old Gruenderzeit building. They ultimately rejected this option, albeit "with a heavy heart", as architect Christoph Hinterreitner puts it. However, they did not reject positioning their new building so that it continues the existing classic block perimeter development. It stands there, moved back slightly from the street to allow the pavement to be widened, with a bend in the facade that reveals a view of the neighbouring Baroque Palais Pfeiffersberg. This bend not only defuses a previous traffic bottleneck, it is also a clear reference to the fact that the school's main entrance, accentuated by a canopy, is now no longer on the street facade but at right angles to it. It includes a forecourt that is generous by inner-city standards, complete with seating and bike parking.
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