Primary School, Kindergarten and Sport Hall, Št. Jurij

The new school is like a river boat buzzing with children, anchored at the confluence of two brooks under the village of Št. Jurij. It consists of two buildings connected by a bridge. The first building houses the nursery, a primary school with its accompanying facilities, and the local community offices, while the other comprises a gym and servicing rooms. The park area between the school, the brook and the gym has be arranged to serve as an outdoor classroom and a playground for the nursery. The bright rooms feature natural materials, especially wood with vivid colours. The transparent multipurpose entrance hall can be extended to host different events. Classrooms have large windows opening onto the surroundings. The wide hallway in front of them represents the upper socialising area with cloarkrooms. The wooden panelling gives the gym, which is the largest public space in the village apart from the church nave, a solemn character. The school’s calm, regionalist expression is a reverence to the anonymous rural architecture of typical houses, barns and “kozolec” constructions of the Dolenjska region. (Maja Ivanič and Špela Kuhar, Contemporary School Architecture in Slovenia 1991-2007)