Slavkov u Brna Primary School

We are architects and planners who care about outcomes. To make it even better, we joined forces with UYO Architects to create the concept of a progressive elementary school, promoting modern teaching, natural student interaction, and technological innovation leading to greater awareness among children of fundamental environmental issues. We firmly believe that our architectural design will move Czech education up to the next level.

Slavkov u Brna is a small South Moravian town with a big history. Its dominant feature for more than 100 years was the local sugar factory. The production of “white gold” and the times when the Austerlitz sugar refinery ranked among the largest in Moravia are still commemorated by a single architectural fragment – the refinery chimney.

When designing Dr. Václav Kounice Primary School, we were well aware of all the historical context of the site. Its architectural morphology therefore evokes the town’s industrial history and refers to its famous sugar past.

Functionally, we have arranged the building so that it allows the use of progressive and modern teaching methods in the different school year-groups and creates space not only for teaching pupils, but also for their natural interaction and overall development. 

With the building’s orientation and spatial concept, we have achieved the creation of a new public space. The school creates a small square, a piazzetta, which will significantly enrich the whole site and contribute to its further flowering, as well as an adjacent park and an enclosed school garden with a playground.

Because it is a public institution dedicated to education, our proposal also envisages maximum use of alternative energy sources and other advanced systems, especially in the area of measuring, regulating, and monitoring energy consumption.

All progressive technologies (from solar collectors, through the green roof to the e‑monitoring of energy consumption) are not only functional but also educational. They should help new generations of children from this school see such technology positively in the light of environmental sustainability, and learn the basic principles of resource conservation – from an early age.