Edgars Kauliņš Lielvārde High School

Priekšlikums / 3.vieta

The motto for the reconstruction of Edgars Kauliņš Lielvārde High School is to find a new face and content for the high school building and its territory in synergy with the character and history of the place, using the potential of the existing building and territory to the maximum.

The high school calls Lielvārde its home – a town by the Daugava river, which has many culturally and historically valuable testimonies, but as time goes by, as fate would have it, some verses of history have also been erased. Not far from the school, in the current Lielvārde park, there was a castle of the Lielvārde manor (built at the beginning of the 19th century), which was destroyed during the First World War. The symmetrical side volumes of the classicism manor house were larger than the middle part.

The new volumes of the high school are designed with reference to the Lielvārde manor palace – the symmetrical side volumes rise above the roof of the first floor, which is designed with a wide overhang. The volumes, semantically similar to a manor, rise above the surface of the Daugava, reflecting what is happening on the public first floor of the building – the social life of the high school. Upon entering the building, the reminiscence of the depths of the present Daugava is created by the skylights and lamps that illuminate the rooms and foyer like beams of light, as well as the freely arranged simple “stone”-shaped furniture with plants. Everyone who comes here is invited to enjoy high school life!

It is proposed to divide the construction into two main phases, with several sub-phases possible. Until 2021. in the 1st phase, it is planned to develop the project and reconstruct the old volume with an area of 2230 m², as well as build a new extension with an area of 920 m². In the 1st phase of the planned construction, a block of administrative rooms, a block of science laboratories and a block of social science classes would be added to the extension. After 2021, in the 2nd phase, during the summer break, it is possible to reconstruct the new volume into a primary school block and, by dismantling the canteen volume, build a new extension in its place with public common spaces on the first floor (multifunctional hall, library, dining hall, cloakroom) and classrooms, including shop and computer science classes.

The building volumes are designed to be conveniently connected to each other and flexible for the needs of both students and teachers. On the first floor of the extension, multifunctional public spaces are planned – a foyer, a multifunctional hall, a library, a dining hall, primary and high school cloakrooms, as well as an administration block. The rooms can be separated from the foyer with sound-insulating sliding partitions, thus the multifunctional hall:

• everyday serves as an extension of the foyer;

• in events held by class groups, it is separated by sliding partitions, providing seats for 300 visitors;

• at all school events, when all partitions are pushed back, in addition to 300 seats, 560 visitors can stand and watch what is happening on the stage elevation from the foyer.