The Edith Stein vocational college in Paderborn, founded in the 1960s as a two-year vocational school for nutrition and home economics and run by the Archdiocese of Paderborn since 1976, is located in a beautiful green area north of Paderborn’s old town. The generously sized property allowed the realization of a spacious school complex with several equal entrances. The ensemble consists of two to three storeys high solitary buildings that are connected to each other by an orthogonal system of single-storey corridors. What is striking about the shape of the buildings, which were constructed in several construction phases, are their facades, which are almost entirely provided with white reinforced concrete frames, infills made of light red bricks or white plaster. This uniform materiality gives the entire system a homogeneous appearance.
The constant expansion of the school program, from practical training in social professions to obtaining general university entrance qualifications, has allowed the number of students to rise from 200 to currently around 800 in just twenty years. The sharp increase in school attendance and the changed teaching methods, including all-day care, required additional classrooms, a cafeteria and a “room of silence”.
The expansion rooms are organized in three new buildings. With an internal school street that runs parallel to “Am Rolandsbad” street, they are integrated into the internal development of the existing buildings. In their materiality, they contain clearly recognizable references to the existing buildings.
From now on, the two end points of the complex are a small chapel in the east and a cafeteria in the west of the property.
With its height of twelve meters, the chapel is a sign of the Catholic institution that can be seen from afar. Its interior and exterior walls are made of solid, white-washed masonry. The small chapel serves as a “room of silence” for meditation, for school services and as a day church for the neighboring Catholic community. The quiet, introverted atmosphere of the room is created by its stone materiality and the daylight, which enters the interior in different ways: in the morning hours as direct sunlight through the narrow, east-facing window slit, during the day as twilight through the perforated, floor-to-ceiling masonry wall or as semi-dark light Backlight above the ceiling cross.
The cafeteria is the place that most clearly highlights the school’s special landscape situation: with its glazed longitudinal wall, it opens up to the green and makes nature part of the interior. A spatially developed skylight supports the idea of a bright, friendly space that is suitable for various events, including extracurricular events.
The new classroom wing is directly attached to an existing building. He takes up its proportions and the design rules. Large-format glass surfaces in the classrooms ensure good, even use of daylight.
A new portal structure strengthens the address of the school ensemble and defines the main entrance to the school.
The new construction measures were implemented during ongoing operations. This also applies to all renovation work that was necessary due to the outdated fire protection and a lack of barrier-free access.
