Secondary School Building, the German School

Secondary School Building, the German School

This secondary school building was designed as the main school for the German School, London. The executive architects were Kersten, Martinoff and Struhk, with WH Marmorek and Clifford Culpin and Partners as joint executive architects. The design team included Dr Walter Marmorek, Colin Bennett, Martin Arnold, George Jelinek, Michael Paul, Tony Donald and Colin Hobart. The building was designed in 1972 and constructed between 1978 and 1981.

The complex design employs two contrasting constructional techniques. The two-storey classroom section has an in situ reinforced concrete frame set out on a 7.2-metre grid with a lightweight waffle slab. A tubular space frame roof provides the structure for the wide span of the single-storey forum and dining area. The building is finished with high-quality materials: hand-made buff facing brick, originally lead cladding and roofs, and window and external door units in anodised bronze. Internally, the concrete frame is exposed and generally unpainted, walls are finished in fair-faced brick or formed of painted panels, glazed partitions and door units are timber, and flooring consists of buff paviors. The space frame is painted brown steel, with balustrades and door furniture in anodised bronze or steel. Many original light fittings remain, along with the original brown and ochre colour scheme. Services are exposed throughout the building.

The main school building is polygonal on plan, comprising a single-storey south-facing forum or communal space and dining room beneath the space frame roof, and two storeys of teaching accommodation to the north, arranged on an L plan and organised around circulation routes or "streets" leading north to the sports hall and east to Douglas House.

The design prioritises internal flexibility and a sense of space and movement. Non load-bearing walls were used throughout the ground floor, and partitions on both levels were intended to be moveable. From the eastern entrance lobby, broad steps descend to the forum, an open performance and meeting space that functions as the equivalent of an enclosed hall in British schools and could provide semi-public facilities to the community. Connected to the forum are the dining room and kitchen, library, conference room, music rooms, and staff room at the centre. The staff room was initially open to the roof but was quickly enclosed by glass partitions.

The ground floor is laid out with single subject-specific rooms and paired classrooms, wide intervening group spaces and cloakrooms, science laboratories and arts and crafts workshops. The smaller, set-back upper floor is reached by a monumental internal stair. Two axes of classrooms are arranged with an open-plan space at the intersection, overlooking the forum. Classrooms include built-in storage space in the inner partition, expressed as an offset in the corridors.

The building's form and treatment were intended to minimise the impact of its large volume in a sensitive location. Its horizontal form is marked vertically by modular window units and roof sections. The southern section beneath the space frame roof has a glazed envelope of canted anodised bronze window units with integral blinds on a shallow brick parapet wall. Blind classroom walls are either brick-faced or, on the upper level, clad in lead and splayed at the base. Classroom windows also feature integral blinds and ventilation units. Throughout, the building has flat and hipped roofs with pronounced ribs and deep overhanging eaves.

Internally, the space frame roof is supported on steel posts rising from facetted concrete drum shafts. The steel framework splays at the head into a series of branches, described as resembling trees in an orchard, and is connected with bold spherical joints. The reinforced concrete frame is supported on facetted reinforced concrete piers with splayed heads, which line the corridors as if creating internal avenues. Wide corridors are flanked by classrooms lit by glazed partitions and clerestory units, while some internal brick-faced walls have large porthole windows. Internal door and window units have channelled frames, and flush panel classroom doors feature integral porthole windows and handles.

The materials and execution are of high quality. The original colour scheme combines buff brickwork and paviors punctuated by grey exposed concrete, with ochre wall panels (some now painted turquoise) and dark stained or painted wood. Aside from a small number of classrooms, the concrete frame remains unpainted, while in some classrooms the waffle ceiling is also exposed. Noise was a problem from inception, and additional cladding, suspended ceilings and insulation have subsequently been added.