School reimagined - an open house for the learning community

During the construction of the Jenaplan School in Weimar (Germany), open learning lofts with a workshop feel were created in three buildings for learning across the year groups. The pilot project of “Schulbau Open Source” impresses with maximum flexible architecture, adapted to a special pedagogical concept.

“Every child can do something” - this mission statement characterises the Jenaplan School in Weimar, Thuringia. The core ideas of the Jenaplan, a special school development concept, are cross-year cooperation and community rituals, as well as joint responsibility of pupils and parents. The school concept is well received in Weimar. Since it was founded in 1993, the number of students has increased from 16 to almost 900. A new building for around half of the pupils was therefore required to replace a dilapidated GDR building at one of the two school locations.

The challenge: Pedagogy needs space

In the participatory planning process for a “school as a workshop” - initiated by IBA Thuringia - three architectural firms were involved in addition to administration and the school community: Gernot Schulz Architektur, Ernst2 Architekten und Hausmann Architektur. The idea and challenge: To build a school that adapts to the open and project-focussed learning concept with maximum architectural flexibility. They were not looking for a standard new school building, but rather a building with no defined spaces that opens up opportunities. The execution was so successful that the new “An der Hart” campus was one of the winners of the German School Prize just a few weeks after its official opening in September 2025.

However, the desired open layout meant that the acoustic conditions, i.e. reverberation times, sound propagation and background noise, had to be taken into account. This is because teaching areas merge with state-of-the-art workshops, where students can learn how to use woodworking and metalworking machines, for example.

The architectural solution: maximum adaptability and good acoustics

Around 500 children and young people in grades 1 to 12 learn here in a “school as a workshop”. The innovative new building consists of three rectangular, three-storey concrete skeleton buildings with a mint-green trapezoidal sheet facade, all-round canopy corridors and external metal stairs. This structure frees the interior of load-bearing walls and escape route surfaces and creates an open atmosphere. Reinforced concrete beams, raw screed floors and unplastered walls underline the workshop character.

At the heart of the design are around 400 m² of bright and naturally ventilated learning lofts for three mixed-year groups each. Glass and light wood walls, curtains, fixtures and wood folding elements can be partially moved or completely removed. Troldtekt acoustic panels in natural wood on the ceilings not only round off the overall design, but also contribute to the high quality of the open learning landscapes.

Hard surfaces such as concrete, glass and plaster cause long reverberation times because sound is reflected many times. Open surface structures, on the other hand, such as the Troldtekt acoustic panels, quickly reduce the sound. This results in a short reverberation time and better acoustics, even at low frequencies, which increases speech comprehensibility - especially important in schools. Troldtekt supports the designers’ architectural idea of calming rooms acoustically.