The wall-less Vittra Telefonplan School by architect Rosan Bosch is an innovative school building without interior walls accommodating the intriguing Vittra educational program. It was built in 2011 at Hägersten in Stockholm, Sweden and covers a 1900 sq.m. area.
The innovative schooling system that the Vittra organization applies does not demand the typical classrooms. The walls can be omitted! The students are taught in groups according to level based on the school’s pedagogical principles “the watering hole”, “the show-off”, “the cave”, “the campfire”, and “the laboratory”. The system itself creates different opportunities for learning and teaching situations. The Vittra school organization’s vision is to create an everyday for the individual students where individual development, a living cultural work and challenging learning environments are most important.
As it appears the creative names of the “learning zones” were a strong inspiration for Rosan Bosch, and an intriguing challenge at the same time. The architect defined spatial divisions and “learning zones” with a significant amount of custom made objects and furniture. Instead of the typical facilities equipped with chairs and desks, a giant iceberg serves as cinema, platform and room for relaxation, and sets the frame for many different types of learning. Moreover, flexible laboratories make it possible to work hands-on with different themes and projects.
Vittra’s reactive schooling method features a vigorous use of digital media and a digitized didactic. For this reason the laptop is the most important tool involved in everyday learning. The structure and layout of the interior space facilitates the use of a laptop in many different positions, sitting, lying down, or standing up.
The more important achievement of the project was that the custom design and the smart segmentation of the interior have perfectly enhanced and complemented the School’s method. In fact the experiment was so successful that Rosan Bosch’s Vittra Telefonplan School is now considered the blueprint for the design of Vittra’s other schools in Sweden.
