The school extension enhances the historic building designed by Fritz Schumacher in 1931 with a new auditorium and also takes advantage of the difference in elevation on the grounds to redesign the sports facilities. The old brick school building, a local landmark and representative of its time, has an airy, playful new counterpart of almost exactly the same dimensions. This creates an exciting transition to the elevated sports field, which helps to ensure that the spacious sports and play area can become an integral part of everyday school life and the school ensemble by incorporating it into the space. As a result, the assembly hall is not only in a prime central location in relation to the existing building, but the new and future heart of the GorchFock-Schule. It connects the old and new school buildings together, without calling into question the dominance and grandeur of the old building. Following the suggestions of the school leadership, the implementation of progressive teaching concepts was taken into account at the planning stage: two classrooms and group rooms each form a functional unit where the requirement for spatial separation has been sacrificed in favour of creating flex - ible spaces that can be connected together as needed with visual transparency and different interior designs.

Source: City profile magazine, issue Hamburg

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