The School in the Park

architect Danilo Fürst
project Elementary School Stražišče, Kranj, Slovenia
written by Nataša Koselj

 

We no longer want the school-army barrack, for it does not offer appropriate conditions for the healthy upbringing and development of the child, we do not want the monumental school because monumentality and representation have nothing in common with the child. We want a school which shall in its entirety respect professional criteria, in the psychological, the cognitive and physical regard, and which thus inspires both the pupils and the teachers for active work. In schools, all that does not serve development and education should be abandoned.

From the Resolution of the Symposium of Architects, Pedagogues and Doctors LRS on the construction of modern schools, Ljubljana, February 25, 1954, see: Arhitekt 12/13, 1954, p. 46

 

Stražišće Kranj primary school was the winning project of a 1954 competition organised on the occasion of the Symposium of Architects, Pedagogues and Doctors entitled “From the old toward the new school” on the advantages of the new education system, organised by the Ljubljana Association of Architects. It was the first realisation of modern school buildings in Slovenia: situated in a park, the school was a combination of pavilion and corridorless models. After receiving the 1959 annual award of the Yugoslav Association of Architects, the school became the model for the construction of primary schools all over what was then Yugoslavia. The Stražišće school received several extensions whose projects were commissioned by its original architect: still creatively active in his 90s, Danilo Fürst has just designed the school’s fourth extension. This school is considered to be the prototype of modern Slovenian schools and is listed as a cultural monument.