A four-story, 12 sq. m. building, designed for 000 students, with 1000 classrooms and more than one gymnasium planned for their education – Tolminkiemis Gymnasium is no longer just a sketch of the team of the architectural studio "DO architects" and the working group that meets periodically in the Vilnius City Municipality.
It is time for the engineering, construction and other project teams to join the project, which are working intensively to achieve the best results. The school is being designed using BIM technology (Building Information Modeling), which will help optimize the design process and avoid critical errors during the design process. All project developers share the building information models with each other - they update them every week and the day is approaching when the accumulated information will turn into a technical project.
Attention to every detail
"A drawing turns into a blueprint," explains the current stage of the project, as architect Andrė Baldišiūtė, the project manager of the building, explains. Together with her colleagues from DO architects, she won the right to design one of the few schools still planned in Lithuania after the restoration of independence in an architectural competition.
The school's visualizations and design proposals were presented to the interested public at the end of November 2019, half a year after the competition in June and after the project had already been revised based on community comments.
“The new Pilaitė Gymnasium will become not only the educational center of Pilaitė, but also a new type of educational institution that has no analogues in Lithuania,” said Vilnius Vice Mayor Vytautas Mitalas. “In order to educate independent and future-ready personalities in the city of Vilnius, we want to design a modern, creative educational institution with learning and recreation spaces. The school’s architectural idea competition brought together the best specialists in its field and was the first of its kind ever held in Lithuania. Currently, a large team of architects is working together with the Vilnius Municipality to ensure that the technical project is prepared as smoothly as possible and that every detail, even the smallest, is thought out.”
"First, the construction idea, then the competition, in which our "Science Square" won, and only after that it was necessary to find out whether the way the project looked was suitable for everyone," explains architect A. Baldišiūtė about the process. "So the competition version was adjusted not only according to the commission's but also according to the community's expectations."
Special community engagement
Community representatives were involved in the project even before the DO architects team was involved – when the municipality was preparing the competition conditions for organizing the public procurement of the architectural idea (along with the project solutions and their implementation). A formal working group for the implementation of the future gymnasium project, consisting of the municipality, architects, students, and active community representatives, was formed as soon as the winners of the competition were selected and worked on refining further requirements for the project. Pilaitė representatives were also on the expert commission that evaluated the works submitted to the architecture competition.
The future users of the building found the project authors' idea of encouraging schoolchildren to cycle even in cold weather attractive, and the architects managed to reconcile the desire of car drivers to solve the problem of parking spaces (there will be 30 additional car spaces) with the desire of young people to see as much greenery as possible.
The residents of the Pilaitė eldership, who are waiting for the Tolminkiemis Gymnasium as a community gathering place, will be able to participate in a variety of activities after school – from sports to classes in laboratories. “If it were up to me, there would also be an open café for the townspeople here after school,” says A. Baldišiūtė.
The future users of the building liked the amphitheater, which was to become the main gathering place for young people, and the architects took away from the public presentation discussions advice that, according to the architect, only people who know the specifics of the future building site can offer. The community's suggestion to "reverse" the school entrance in a mirror image was also taken into account so that the flow of people going to the school would not interfere with the movement of the public transport stop located nearby.
The community also posed one of the biggest challenges to the architects, when, amidst the general praise for the amphitheatre space, a remark was made that the amphitheater stairs were not adapted for people with mobility disabilities. “We could have replied that everything was done in accordance with the technical construction regulations and that the school has elevators, but if you think about a child with mobility disabilities, who already has difficulty integrating and who will not have the opportunity to chat with classmates even during a break between classes, if you think about teachers or other community members who may have mobility disabilities and who may use the school premises, it is worth considering how to solve that problem. Now the amphitheater has both stairs and a serpentine that can be climbed, and that solution has also created all sorts of additional values,” says A. Baldišiūtė.
After a public meeting, having agreed with the community, the project authors soon had in their hands the special architectural requirements and technical conditions for transportation communications. Further design work is underway according to these and other conditions. During the preparation of the technical project, interim cost calculations will be carried out, which will help control the cost of project solutions and not exceed the planned cost of the school.
In June, it is planned to finish the technical project and start the procedures for obtaining the building permit, the building permit is planned to be obtained in 2020. in September and announce a tender for the construction contract.
