HEERUP SCHOOL FOR KIDS WITH SPECIAL NEEDS

Heerup School reflects, embraces, and gives space to the minds of kids with special needs. Here, space is created for those children that need something special to get through the day. Who needs something different from what we would consider the “normal” school. Heerup School is a special school for children, aged 6-16, with pervasive mental developmental disorders. The project is a transformation and extension to an existing school building from 1949. The existing building had classic long corridors, various levels, and evenly distributed classrooms. It was transformed and expanded to accommodate the demands of a school for kids with special needs. The consideration for the particularly sensitive children was thought into the building so that the children have an optimal framework for well-being and learning. The main grip of the transformation has been to turn the existing, classic building mass upside down. The dark and long corridors are gone, and now replaced by larger and more flexible group rooms connected by a new lightfilled zone for movement (the connection zone), that extends around -and embraces the existing schoolyard. The new extension makes the way between the school’s functions less resource-intensive for students and teachers. As well as the new building opens up between functions it also creates room for play, learning, and other supportive teachings. There are allocated spaces for both seeking protection and being alone, but also easy access to the opportunity to explore communities in various degrees. Throughout the building built-in niches of varying sizes have been placed, enabling the individual student to withdraw from the community and find peace in a more intimate space. The movement zone has direct access to a central, enclosed courtyard filled with trees, a green amphitheater, and garden beds along the facades - a quiet oasis where both children and adults can take a break or bring lessons out into the open air. Besides the central atrium courtyard, the new building volume forms small intimate ‘pockets -courtyards” that connects to the individual group rooms and works as an extra break-out space for the children. In the architectural design process, the focus has been on the children’s special needs and challenges. Themes such as readability, variety, flexibility, and transitions have been the focal point for the transformation of the school, both in the overall disposition and in the choice of materials and colors. The philosophy has been to focus especially on how high-quality architecture with attention to tactility, detail and the understanding of sensitive, curled minds can make a difference for teachers, kids, and their families and eventually for society. The first report from the school one year after moving into the new facilities shows that confrontations between kids and teachers and sick days for teachers have fallen dramatically.