The project is expected to be completed by the end of 2018. Picture: Dezeen Daily
By The Siberian Times reporter: Stunning new Danish-designed buildings will offer new hope to orphans and their adoptive families. The modern 20-hectare campus on the banks of the Angarsk River in the historic city of Irkutsk will cater for 1,040 students aged three to 18. A key element is a village for families adopting children, but it will also be a kindergarten, an elementary and a high school, as well as a cultural and recreation centre. Smart School board member and Russian businesswoman Tina Kandelaki said it was a pioneering model, bringing a new concept of education and targeting individual students' needs. 'We are implementing a model of socially responsible education,' she said. 'Smart School is intended to be a real home for adopted children, who will live with foster parents in a specially-built village and will go to school with children from regular families. While engineering this educational cluster, we pursued the goal of creating a community that can provide resources for self-development to all its members. It is, therefore, important that we will provide the best possible education for children who under other circumstances would not have the resources to obtain this level of education.'
'The goal is to raise a generation of active, enterprising and creative people'. Pictures: Dezeen Daily
Danish architecture studio CEBRA won an interenational competition to design the 'new kind of school' in Irkutsk. The modernistic design involves a ring of connected buildings with overhanging eaves and a landscaped 'meadow' in the centre. The total size of the buildings is 31,000 square metres. 'By turning a string of individual buildings containing the main functions into a ring, the emerging central area becomes an interconnected space of cross-functional relations,' said CEBRA co-founder Carsten Primdahl. 'At the same time, the gaps between the buildings along the ring make the meadow both visually and physically accessible from the outside, and allow for activities to diffuse between the meadow and the surrounding landscape.' A white ridged roof will unite the structures, creating sheltered spaces in between. The varying heights of the ridges and sizes of the eaves are intended to indicate the different functions of the buildings.
'The school is intended to be a real home for adopted children'. Pictures: Dezeen Daily
Mark Sartan, general director of the project, said the goal is to 'raise a generation of active, enterprising and creative people and provide an opportunity to generate positive changes in the educational system and the social sphere of the region and the country'. The project, which is funded by the New House Foundation, has been under development by education experts for more than two years. It is expected to be completed by the end of 2018. Source: Article
