What?
OMA, a leading international partnership which specialises in practising architecture, urbanism, and cultural analysis have collaborated with the Circlewood consortium to design a modular, mass-timber system that will be used to construct up to 30 schools in the Netherlands, with the aim of it being replicable.
Purpose
"With this system, the new schools that will be built in Amsterdam, and hopefully elsewhere in the Netherlands, can expand, downscale, or vary in configurations to respond to different needs over time,"
Green Credentials
To keep the benefits of this system accessible to all and element of education in its adoption, the schools’ carbon footprint and resource consumption will be visually available on information screens to help educate students and teachers of their environmental impact. The schools will have "minimised emissions," as a result of this according to the studio. This may be due to the student's awareness of how their attitudes and behaviours have an impact on the carbon footprint of the school.
Additional minimised emissions will be achieved due to the prefabricated building method which consists of standardised wooden columns and cross-laminated timber floor panels, connected by recycled steel joints, the system will be used as a base for primary schools. These materials encourage the reduction of nitrogen emissions. The carbon-absorbing biobased walls and the building components will be able to be reused
The modules will be made in a factory in a "digitally controlled process". The components are to be assembled on-site by electric cranes, which will be arranged into structural frameworks.
The partition walls will be non-load bearing enabling the creation of flexible spaces that can be adaptable and used as auditoriums, gardens or classrooms. Biobased materials will be used to ensure the partition walls are suitable for activities such as vertical farming and indoor climbing.
Sustainable Communities
The studio is going further to ensure the implementation of these units will help select young architects and landscape designers. This will develop the schools, with a pilot school currently being developed together with Studio A Kwadraat. OMA and Circlewood will continue to refine the project and hope that it will eventually also be applied outside of the Netherlands.