A self-built wooden framework invites the residents to shape their own homes, guided by clear manuals and supported by a communal workshop. The manuals simplify a range of housing types, all derived from the Greek stoa: a long semi-public corridor where communal life happens, while the private apartments open quietly towards the park. These corridors and mezzanines belong to the residents alone.
Three linear buildings, between 40 and 70 metres long, frame the school site. The main building carries three upper floors over an open ground floor that can be opened completely; the other two have two. Stoa living occupies the first and second floors, studio living the third. The ground floors let indoor public space run straight into the garden and the school park, stitching together green spaces that had been left fractured.
Hard edges — the school fences above all — are softened by shaping the topography and placing the buildings so that the visual boundaries blur. The light timber structures rest on point-supported stone foundations and barely touch the earth. Rammed earth towers weather away slowly. The buildings are meant to dissolve over time and return to the landscape leaving as little as possible behind.
