LFG – Keep on Thinking School

This film by Wolfgang Thaler takes us on a tour of the primary and vocational school that opened in autumn 2020 on Meidlinger Längenfeldgasse in Vienna. The schoolhouse by PPAG architects joins a new all-day primary school for 425 children and 2 vocational schools for 630 trainees. Thanks to its spatial-pedagogical concept, the primary school fulfils all the requirements for contemporary teaching. It consists of four clusters, each of which features four or five classrooms grouped around a learning landscape. The architecture enables the teachers to tend to small groups of children of various ages and from various grades. The building serves the purpose of acquiring knowledge and methods in many different ways. Each pedagogical space has an annexe that can be used as a nest or a peaceful oasis. The teachers’ team rooms in the individual clusters are all connected via a terrace in the inner courtyard: this will promote informal conversation. An age-appropriate adaptation of the cluster system has been realized in the vocational school on the upper levels. A large multipurpose space and the outdoor areas function as meeting points between the two schools. The school project has been nominated for the 2022 Mies van der Rohe Award.

Anna Popelka and Georg Poduschka operate PPAG architects with their team. Since its inception in 1995, the studio (Vienna/Berlin) has continuously worked in the broad field of architectural research and development, with the aspiration of realizing innovation as well. Although the studio works with the entire field of architecture, over the past few years a concentration on residential and educational building has evolved, such as the Europan 06 apartment complex and the Sonnwendviertel educational campus in Vienna, Slim City in Aspern and the secondary school in Sauland, Norway, but also including special projects like the Pah-Cej-Kah office and commercial building and the Steiereck restaurant. The most recently completed projects are a residential and office building on Berlin’s Lützowstrasse as well as Vienna’s Open Up neighbourhood centre and the Längenfeldgasse primary and vocational school. In Berlin, PPAG is currently building a school for an integrated secondary school and a grammar school on the Allee der Kosmonauten. The studio has earned many national and international distinctions, including the City of Vienna Prize for Architecture, the Adolf Loos State Prize for Design, the Hans Hollein Art Prize for Architecture and three nominations for the Mies van der Rohe Award.

Read more in Detail 10.2022 and in our databank Detail Inspiration.