Stöckliacker School Complex

The Stöckliacker school complex in Lohn-Ammannsegg is defined by two fixed conditions: a large open space at its centre, and a site that slopes gently across it. Haller Gut Architekten's new building closes a gap in the complex, set between the existing double kindergarten and a multipurpose hall along Friedhofstrasse. Generous distances to the neighbouring school and residential buildings, together with sightlines kept open across the plot, preserve the site's spatial expanse despite the considerable densification the new building represents.

The addition is a three-storey timber structure, filigree enough, in the architects' own description, to give the school an identity without adding visual weight to an already crowded site. It is oriented outward on every side rather than toward a single front: a generous canopy and three covered entrance loggias mark the points of arrival, sheltering the thresholds between inside and outside. The timber structure is left exposed throughout, standing as both frame and finish; in selected interior spaces raw brick is left similarly unfinished, extending the same restraint to the building's second material.

In plan, the school and the sports hall are kept spatially separate so the two can be run independently. Rooms for sport sit in the gallery and basement levels; the ground floor gathers the kindergartens, the day school and a cultural room with direct access outside. Above, the school rooms are grouped into a cluster reached through a central, multi-purpose hall, with cloakrooms and study niches set along both sides of its façade — used for independent work as well as an informal break space.

The slope that defines the site is treated as a working device rather than a condition to be levelled: because the ground falls toward the building, both the school's ground floor and the sports hall's gallery level can be entered directly at grade, without ramps, stairs or additional excavation. Outside, a green belt of trees runs along the street-facing edges of the plots and frames the shared open space at the centre of the complex; the playgrounds, sports fields and open areas surrounding the building are loosely rather than prescriptively arranged, offering different play and adventure zones to children of different ages, a range of activity further extended by a small natural forest at the site's edge.

The project, designed and built between 2023 and 2025 for the Einwohnergemeinde Lohn-Ammannsegg, extends an existing school campus rather than replacing it — closing out the Stöckliacker complex's edge while leaving the ground it was built around, and the buildings either side of it, undisturbed.