Timber school with distinctive landscape backdrop

On Frösön in Östersund, Marge has designed a new school for 14 classes (F–6, 2 classes per year) with an associated sports hall. The site for the buildings is located at the edge of a residential area of detached houses and borders natural landscape and mountain views.
The buildings are constructed with a wooden structural frame, taking inspiration from the historic timber architecture of Östersund Municipality. They are articulated to convey a contemporary and characterful expression, forming a subdued, nature-oriented backdrop to the large-scale landscape.

The linear school building, with its articulated masses, shifts both vertically and laterally, forming a two- to three-storey structure in a split-level configuration. The shifting volumes together with a recessed plinth floor facing the schoolyard, help reduce the perceived scale of the building. Towards the schoolyard, an arcade marks the entrances to the building. The roof and its projecting canopy accommodate photovoltaic panels facing southwest. It is characterised by timber supports, unifies the volumes, and projects towards the schoolyard to the south, providing protection from weather and sun. Loading and service functions are located along the more closed northern side facing the traffic on Fröjavägen.

Plan 1 contains entrances to the home base areas as well as the main entrance, administration and specialist classrooms such as crafts and music. At the main entrance, visitors are directed to a central interior hub in the form of a stepped seating stair within the open space, leading to plan 2 where the dining hall, a future library, and additional home base areas are located. Plan 3 consists solely of home base areas. The plant room can be found in the attic (Plan 4).
The sports hall is positioned on the opposite side of the schoolyard, primarily comprising a large building volume that houses a full-size sports hall with spectator seating. A lower, single-storey volume surrounds the main volume, containing changing rooms, storage, building services, staff areas, etc. The main entrance faces the school building, while external changing rooms, secondary entrances and service areas face the sports field.

The school building and sports hall interact through their placement and the orientation of the projecting roofs to reinforce the cohesive schoolyard and entrance square formed between them. The volumes are designed to relate to one another, even though detailing and execution vary. Both buildings have horizontally articulated timber façades that will weather to a natural grey over time. The school’s three storeys vary in expression, from planed timber at the plinth level to an offset timber board-and-batten expression on Levels 2 and 3. The sports hall’s lower volume is clad in planed timber, while the larger volume is complemented with vertical slatted battens that become deeper and more widely spaced at the upper section of the hall. Window sections and entrances are given a dark red accent colour, while downpipes, gutters, etc. are executed in hot-dip galvanised steel. The roofs are clad in red roofing felt.

The layout of the school building is area-efficient, organised around shared home base areas, each used by two classes. Internally, glulam beams and CLT columns are exposed wherever possible, for example in the home base areas and in the stair cores. Each classroom has one exposed CLT wall facing the exterior façade. The interior palette is characterised by natural timber surfaces and warm tones. The sports hall similarly conveys a warm expression, with timber panelling and spatially defining structural elements such as exposed glulam columns and roof trusses.